Pages from a Scrapbook
by William Easley
Summary: From January to June can seem very short...or like forever, if like Dipper and Mabel you're waiting to go back to Gravity Falls. Meanwhile, here are some glimpses into what goes on in their lives...
1. Chapter 1

**Pages from a Scrapbook**

 _After Dipper and Mabel Pines returned to their home in Piedmont, California, after spending part of their Christmas break in Gravity Falls, they looked forward to June, when—their dad said "sure" and their mom said "we'll see"—they intended to return to the Mystery Shack and their friends for a third summer in Gravity Falls._

 _Still, life goes on. They were in high school now, and Mabel, especially, was upset when their schedules didn't allow them to have the same classes at the same time. They did have home room together, along with English and Algebra 1, but they didn't share the same lunch period or their other classes. They did manage to share a seat in the bus on the way to school, but after school Dipper had track practice. Sometimes he caught a ride home with an older student athlete, and sometimes their mom drove over to pick him up._

 _Homework was heavier and harder than it had been in middle school, but they coped and helped each other out. After dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Dipper walked down the street to the Morgensens' house, where he took guitar lessons for forty-five minutes. Mabel usually spent that time knitting or working on an art project._

 _Or—scrapbooking. She kept up the habit, as Dipper kept up his journal-writing habit. Here are a few things that she devoted special pages to in the winter and spring of 2014 as they waited, hoped, and determined to go back to Gravity Falls._

 **1: Squirmy Pink Piglets**

 _Saturday, January 11, 2014:_

Saturday morning at eleven, and Dipper was in his room playing "Shoot the Mooks" on his GameGuy when he heard the siren-like howl of his sister from next door: "Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh, DIPPER!"

So he rolled out of bed and padded to his sister's bedroom in his sock feet. The door stood ajar. "What's wrong, Mabel!"

"Nothing! Come and see! Come and see!" His twin was sitting cross-legged on her bed, still in her sleep shirt and shorty pajamas—she was lazy on weekends—and her laptop rested on her legs. "Soos! Dipper just came in! Say hi to him!"

"Hey, dawg!" came Soos's voice from the tinny speakers of the laptop. "Can't see you, dude."

Dipper hopped onto the bed beside Mabel. "Here I am. What's up?" Then he realized that the background looked strange, like a barn, not like the Shack. "Where are you?"

"I'm in my second cousin's, like, barn? And I just showed Mabel—wait a minute—these little guys." The picture on the monitor spun, and for a moment Dipper didn't know what he was looking at—some weird mutant semi-human monster with six or eight heads, he thought—but then the image clarified. Piglets, squirming and wriggling and rooting in the straw.

"They're over a month old now," Soos's voice said. "They're finally all weaned an' junk. These are Waddles's kids, and Mabel gets to pick one."

"They're all so great!" Mabel said, clenching her fists and staring with wide, wide eyes. "How can I choose just one?"

"Here, Hambone. I'll set up my laptop on this crate. Just a minute. There. Now I'll show them off to you one by one. Hey, Juan, you hand 'em to me and I'll hold 'em up, is that cool? It is? Give me the first one."

On the screen, Soos's big hands appeared holding a squirming little piglet. "Dude, is this a guy or a girl? Huh? Juan says this one's a little girl. She's kinda marked like her mom. See on her back, she has these darkish spots? Juan says they'll turn black over time. OK, next one."

Each one caused Mabel to squee. Dipper thought they were all pretty much alike—but then he didn't have Mabel's sharp eye for porkly charm.

The fourth piglet, another female, almost caused Mabel to faint with delight. She was smaller than the others, but looked a lot like Waddles, though unlike him, she had not just one, but two dark pink spots on her face, one around each eye. As Soos held her up, he said, "Juan says this little girl one is kinda the runt of the litter. Oops! She's peein' on me, man!"

"That's the one!" Mabel yelled as, on screen, Soos's hands dripped beneath the piglet. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Dipper said, "Sorry about the accident."

Holding up the piglet as the last drops fell, Soos chuckled. "Dude, with my kid I've had worse. OK, Mabel, this is the one. What are you gonna name her, dude?"

"Widdles!" Mabel yelled.

"What?" their mother called from downstairs. "What did you say, Mabel?"

"Widdles!" Mabel yelled louder. "Because she widdles!"

"Whatever, dear," her mom called.

Soos said, "Okay, cool, now, I understand you guys get off a day from school a week from Monday, for like, Martin Luther King day? So Stan says he'll pay for the tickets if you two want to come in for a quick visit. You can, like, fly up after school on Friday and then fly back home on Monday afternoon, and you can come and get to know your pig. Sounds funny when I say it."

"We'll be there!"

Dipper said, "Uh, Mabel, we'd better ask—"

"We! Will! Be! There!"

Soos chuckled. "Give me a call when it's, like, all worked out. They're all weaned now, and so Juan's lettin' me take this little guy—uh, gal, I guess—home in a pet carrier. We got a nice heated little pen for her and Waddles out back now, and if it gets really cold, she can come inside. Abuelita won't be back from Mexico until April, so nobody's gonna mind."

"Put 'em all on screen again!" Mabel said. She did a screen capture of all the piglets, but with Widdles prominent on top of the pile. "I'm gonna print this out!" she said, jumping off the bed and running out of the room, clutching her laptop. Dipper heard her yell, "Scrapbookportunity!" as she raced down the stairs.

And then Mom's voice: "Mabel! It's time to get dressed! Remember your schedule!"

Dipper grinned. If Stan was working on it, somehow or other they'd get at least a brief visit to Gravity Falls. Mabel would be over the moon to meet Widdles. And, well, Dipper had his own reasons.

He went back to his own room, put away his GameGuy, and found his acoustic guitar. He tuned it—that had been tricky to learn, but he'd mastered it, which was good because it got out of tune faster than a Bulgarian car engine—and sat on his bed, strumming.

Seven chords he could nail now: C, D, E, F, G7, D7, and A minor. He was working on some tougher ones, too. But with these he was trying to compose his first song. He strummed a few and hummed a melody as he did.

Fitting the words in. That was the hard part.

Quite softly, wishing he had a better voice, he began to sing: "Now you're my hero, you're everything that's cool . . .."

Not quite right, but he was getting there.

He went through the bass line three times, liking it a little more each time he played it, tweaking it now and again.

He heard Mabel running back up the stairs—she had two speeds, off and full—and he set the guitar aside. As he expected, she came tearing into his room a few moments later, scrapbook in hand. "Ta-da!"

"Looks nice, Mabel," Dipper said.

A five-by-seven blowup of the piglet pile dominated the page. Under it she had written, in colorful markers:

THE STORY OF WIDDLES: A PIG'S ADVENTURES BEGIN!

"Needs two more exclamation points," Dipper said.

"Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, Mom and Dad have to let us go!"

Dipper shrugged. "Well—they haven't planned anything for that weekend, so—"

Mabel jumped onto his bed and flopped back, arms extended. "I'll die if they say no! I'll just wither up into a little ball and die! Go tell Mom I'll die if I can't go meet Widdles!"

The phone rang.

Dipper waited a minute and softly picked up his phone. He heard Stan's voice, though Stan was speaking with the care and enunciation he usually used when on the phone with Mom and Dad, who still thought he was Stanford: "Yes, the new manager of the Mystery Shack has a wonderful surprise for Mabel, and everyone here would love to see the kids again. I thought I might fly down and accompany them back up here, because I have a kind of surprise for the whole family—"

Quietly hanging up, Dipper said, "You're gonna survive, Sis. Grunkle Stan's on the case."

"Oh, my gosh, what'm I gonna pack? What's the weather like in Gravity Falls? Can pigs fly on airplanes? I wanna bring her back! Can we have her declared a helper pig? You can wear Wendy's hat! I won't tell her that the dumb high-school vice-principal told you not to wear it in school! But I will tell her you wear it all the time around here! Where is it? There it is! You ought to brush it. Do you think we need to send it to the cleaner's? Oh, your guitar! Are you—"

"Not taking the guitar," Dipper said. "Not this time. I want to be able to play it better before letting Wen—letting everyone listen to me."

"Wendy!" Mabel said, bouncing up to her knees. She began to poke Dipper. "Boop! Boop! Boop! You're gonna serenade her! What are you gonna play? You're pretty good at 'Folsom Prison Blues!'"

"Not her kind of song," Dipper said. "No, don't say anything to anybody about the guitar, OK? I want to get better. Let it be a surprise next summer."

"Awww." With a slight malicious twinkle, she said, "I bet you got time to learn 'Straight Blanchin'!"

Dipper smacked her with a pillow.

Ten minutes later, their mom had to come upstairs to break up the pillow fight. "Sometimes you two don't even act like you're in high school!" she scolded. "Mabel, it's nearly noon, so _please_ get dressed!"

"Uh—who was on the phone, Mom?" Dipper asked, picking up the pillow Mabel had wielded as a weapon and tossing it back on the bed.

"That was your great-uncle Stanford," she said. "I suppose you'll both just pester me about what he wanted, if I don't tell you, and it's not certain until your dad and I talk it over, but he's invited you up next weekend. Would you like to go if everything works out?"

"Sure!" Mabel said, turning red in the face from the effort of containing her enthusiasm.

"Yeah, that'd be cool," Dipper said with the kind of shrug a fourteen-year-old boy gives to show that what his mom had just said was, like, _no big deal, whatever, man, but I guess it'd sorta be OK with me, YAHOO!_

"All right, then. But you have to shape up! Dipper, tidy up your room, please. And Mabel, for the last time—get some proper clothes on!"

They agreed. As soon as their mom went back downstairs, Mabel held up her palm for a high five, and Dipper slapped it. "Yipe!" she said, shaking her hand as if it smarted from the impact.

"You high-five harder than I just did," he said.

"Yeah, but—wait, let me see your hand. You, too!"

"Yeah," he said. "I thought at first it was the guitar playing causing it, but—well. We _are_ gonna be fifteen next August."

They put their hands together, palm to palm. Their ring fingers were definitely wider than they had been. Over the next few months they would grow to be like two fingers, joined side by side, the second one shorter. And some time that summer, maybe earlier, maybe later, the pinky would completely divide and they'd have ten fingers, like adults, not the normal eight that kids had.

"I guess we're really, truly growing up," Mabel whispered, looking a little fearful, a little stricken.

Dipper hugged her. "Yeah, but that's not bad. Not as long as you're young enough so you can get excited by a new baby pig." He let her go. "Now get changed so Mom won't say we can't go up to the Falls, OK?"

"OK." She headed out the door, and behind her Dipper said quietly and sincerely, "Mabel? One more thing that you're not too old for."

She turned. "What's that?"

"Last tag!" And he smacked her over the head with his pillow.

— _More scrapbook pages to come . . .._


	2. Chapter 2

**2: A Girl and Her Pigs**

Mabel came running into the house at four p.m. on January 17. Throwing her backpack onto the sofa, she yelled, "Where is he? Is he here yet? Where is he?"

Her mother came from the kitchen, shaking her head. "Your father's driven to the airport to bring your great-uncle Stanford home," she said. "They'll be back around four, and then we're having an early dinner right away, because your plane leaves for Portland at 8:50 tonight, and it's a drive to the airport."

Mabel threw herself onto the sofa beside her backpack, heels on the back, back on the cushion, head and hair dangling to the floor. "Oh, man! Nearly five more hours? This is agony!"

A car stopped outside the house, and a moment later, Dipper walked in. "Hi, Mom," he said. "What's wrong with Mabel? She's upside down."

"You ask her," his mom said, going back into the kitchen.

"Smells good," Dipper called to her, moving Mabel's backpack to the floor and dropping his own beside it.

"Didn't you have practice?" Mabel asked, worming off the sofa and then getting up to sit on it right way around.

"Short one. Coach said since it's a holiday weekend, he'd be light on us. Seriously, Sis, are you OK?"

She clenched her hands into fists. "I just want to be in Gravity Falls _sooooo bad_!"

He patted her shoulder. "We'll be there by midnight. I looked up the flight schedules and all."

"Widdles doesn't even know me! What if she thinks I'm ugly?"

"Mabel, she's a pig," Dipper said. "She'll think you're gorgeous. If she doesn't, try eating a meal with her. She'll think you're one of her own kind and take to you right away."

 _Pfbbbt!_ Mabel stuck out her tongue at him in a juicy raspberry that made him wipe his cheek. Then she said, "No, wait. This calls for a more drastic punishment. Tickle attack!"

"No tickle attack!" Dipper yelled, jumping up, but he was too late. She was on him, threw him to the floor, and tickled him in circles and into shrieking fits until their mother came and stood in the doorway frowning down at them.

"I could change my mind, you know," she said.

"OK, OK," Mabel muttered. "I'll just sit here and enjoy my mad." She jumped back on the sofa, pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them. If she'd been wearing a sweater, Dipper thought, she would have taken a trip to Sweater Town.

"Whoosh," he said, standing up and trying to catch his breath. "I'm gonna take my junk up to my room. Want me to haul yours up for you?"

"Please."

Dipper lugged the backpacks upstairs, dropped his backpack in the corner of his room, checked his already-packed suitcase, which was on the bed, put Wendy's fur trapper's hat on top of it (as if he would forget) and then dropped Mabel's backpack in her room.

When he came down again, their mom popped out of the kitchen again. "Remember to take your homework with you," she warned.

"Don't have any," Mabel said. "Already turned in the project that was due in history and worked a chapter ahead in algebra. I've written my essay on the novel for English. Done all my art work. I'm completely caught up."

"Same here," Dipper said. "We told our teachers we were going to be away, and they let us finish up our work in study hall all this week."

"Dipper, you did tell Mr. and Mrs. Morgensen—"

"That I won't take a music lesson this afternoon or Monday," Dipper finished for her. "Yes, taken care of."

Mrs. Pines put her hands on her hips. "Dipper, you have to stop cutting people off when they're speaking. It's very rude!"

"Sorry," he said, trying to look contrite and succeeding only in looking sullen.

Mabel jumped up. "I hear Dad's car!" She blurred to the front door and threw it open.

"She has hearing like a guard dog," Dipper said.

"That's no way to talk about your sister!"

" _Sorry_ ," Dipper said again. This was something new to him—Mabel had always come in for the greater share of parental reprimands. He had been the obedient kid, the smart one, the organized one. Now, though—some days he lacked patience, and other days he just felt plain ornery. Sometimes he wondered what was wrong with him and was tempted to blame Bill Cipher.

But not now. He heard Mabel's excited chatter from outside, and instead of coming in from the garage into the kitchen, he saw not two, but four people—Mabel, his dad, and—both Grunkles! He cheered up immediately and exclaimed, "Whoa!"

They spilled in, Mabel still chattering a mile a minute. "Mom! Mom! Look who it is! Grunkle Stanford—and Grunkle Stanley!"

"Hi, sweetie," Stanley said, stepping forward to hug their mom. "I hope these two haven't been giving you a lot of grief!"

"Stan—Stanley?" Mom said as Dad came through the door behind them. "But you're Stanford! I—we heard—we thought—" She swallowed. "I mean, Mabel wrote that she and Dipper had two Grunkles, but we just imagined that—that you, I mean Stanford—I mean, you just told them you had a twin brother and didn't mention that he'd passed—I'm so confused!"

Stanford stepped up and took both her hands in his. "We have some serious explaining to do," he said quietly. "Maybe we'd better all sit down."

They talked around the table—the brisket Mrs. Pines had prepared easily stretched to accommodate another plate—and Mr. and Mrs. Pines sat wide-eyed and occasionally even open-mouthed as the Stans told their tale.

"So," Stanford said after he had made some preparatory remarks, " _I'm_ actually Stanford. My brother here is the one you thought was me. Now, forgive us for this, but I can't tell you a lot about the deception. It was necessary. Without giving you information that I'm forbidden to reveal, I'll say this: Just imagine that for the past thirty years I have been deeply involved with—well, let's call it the intelligence community and leave it at that."

"Like spies?" Dad asked, looking excited.

Stanley said gently, "Hey, the man said leave it at that."

"Sorry," Dad said, sounding like Dipper.

"For various reasons, mostly having to do with the safety of the family, Stanley faked his death years ago and took my place in Gravity Falls—it was my base, and I had a cover story in place already as a reclusive researcher. Few people in town knew me well, and Stanley easily passed for me. You see, the—well, the opposite side, let's call the bad guys, would think that I had settled down there and was no longer pursuing investigations as long as Stanley impersonated me convincingly."

"And by the way turned his house into a money-making proposition," Stanley said, grinning.

Stanford gave him a long look. "Yes. And, to make a long story short—and you understand I cannot give you any more details—I have been busy bringing international criminals to justice. Last summer, Dipper and Mabel helped me with my last case when we tracked down a valuable stolen artifact—"

"The reward the twins got!" their mother exclaimed. "We didn't know what to make of it, but the lawyer for that British company insisted it was all legitimate!"

"We had to meet with him three times before she'd believe it," Dad said. "But it checked out as on the level."

"Oh, it was," Stanford said. "And well-deserved. In fact, Dipper and Mabel brilliantly allowed us to find the final clue to the artifact's whereabouts."

"Did you—were they in danger?" Mom asked.

Mabel laughed out loud. "Us? C'mon, Mom! It's not like we were dangling from a _rope_ being hauled by a giant _eagle_ twenty feet off the ground or anything! It was mostly book work—right, Dip?"

"Yeah. Uh, I mean, yes. Yes, it was." Dipper quickly took a bite of beef to hide his expression.

Stan nodded. "Yeah, see, and as a government-style man, Ford couldn't legally accept a reward, so he passed it along to the kids. It ought to allow them to go to whatever college or university they want."

"Uh—yes, exactly," Dad said. "Wow. We've put it all in a college fund for them—well, almost all of it—wow. I mean—wow! Uncle Stanford, did you have a spy car? Sorry, I'm not supposed to ask things like that. You know, I sort of remember you. I think once when I was little you both visited us at our place, didn't you?"

"Yeah, that was a rare joint appearance," Stanley said. You couldn't have been more than three or four, though. I rode you around on my shoulders, remember?"

"And I repaired your toy walkie-talky," Ford said. "Oh, by the way, I was so sorry to learn from Stanley of our brother's passing. I was, ah, very, very far out of the country for that whole time and completely incommunicado."

"Shermy was a good man," Stan said quietly. "I still think of him a lot."

"So are you still intelligent?" Mom asked, still looking flustered. "Um—I mean in intelligence?"

"No, no," Ford said, smiling easily. "I've taken retirement. The pension is generous, my time's my own, and I can go back to tinkering and inventing. I can truthfully say this last year has been one of the best of my life—not least because I met our great-niece and nephew here."

Stan lifted a glass of red wine. "To Dipper and Mabel!"

The adults clinked glasses. Dipper said, "To you, goofball," and raised his glass of grape juice.

"And to you, dork face," she said politely, and they clinked.

* * *

The drive to San Francisco wasn't all that long in distance—not much more than twenty miles—but it took time, and Mabel fretted all the way. "We're gonna miss the plane, we're gonna miss the plane!"

They didn't, though—they caught it in plenty of time. Mabel took the window seat and their Grunkles sat in the two seats right beside them, across the aisle. Stan, who had the outside seat, turned to look at them. Dipper noticed that he looked pale and sweaty. In a strained voice, he asked, "You two munchkins doin' OK?"

"Doin' great!" Mabel said. "First class is the only way to fly!"

"Stan, man, this must cost you a lot," Dipper said. "I feel guilty."

Stanley laughed. "Hey, I got _investments_ , ya know? Plus regular trips to Nevada when I can talk Poindexter into comin' along. Together we can always beat the house odds! Right now, even payin' income tax, I'm rakin' in more dough in one year than I useta make at the Shack in five!"

"And I have my patents," Ford said. "I'm not quite in Fiddleford McGucket's league, but I'm probably pretty close to Mr. Northwest! And I also invest my money and save a reasonable portion of it as well—and I'm talking to you, Stanley."

Stan gave a grin, though he looked a little sickly as the airplane tilted back for its climb to cruising altitude. "Yaketty, yaketty, yaketty. The important thing is to use the moolah to do things that make you happy. Although I gotta say ridin' around in this aluminum tube at, what, thirty thousand feet, ain't cuttin' it for me."

"Huh," Mabel said. "Funny, I get antsy looking over a cliff or going up in a tall building, but I can look out the window here and it doesn't bother me at all. Mmmppghh!"

"The airsick bag's in the pocket there," Dipper said.

"Blarrggghh! Wanna—wanna trade seats, Dipper?"

"Well—not _now_!"

* * *

They got in late Friday night and turned in immediately—that night, Ford and Stan put them up in a couple of rooms of Fiddleford's mansion, which had plenty to spare. The older twins now were more or less permanent house guests of the McGuckets and had one floor of one wing as their own.

Mabel was up early, pestering Stan to take them to the Shack. Dipper felt his heart beating faster. He wanted to get there, too—for reasons of his own. The elder twins drove them first to Yumberjack's for breakfast—which Mabel wolfed down in record time—and then out to the Shack. They arrived at 7:30.

A light crust of old snow lingered in the shade of the house and the trees, but the weather was clear, the temperature right at 34 degrees. The younger twins raced to the front door, opened it, and Mabel immediately yelled, "Where's my _piiiiigs_?"

Melody looked out from the kitchen, smiling sweetly. "Hi, you two! Mabel, they're out in their little house in the backyard—"

"Later!"

Dipper tagged along. Waddles and Widdles lay in clean, thick hay, curled up together, but as soon as he heard them, Waddles came bounding out to greet Mabel. If he'd had enough of a tail, he might have wagged it. Mabel gave him a big hug—though she could no longer even reach all the way around his fat neck—and then squeed as she picked up the baby. "Oooh, look at you! So pretty! Hi, Widdles! I'm Mabel!"

Dipper had his phone out. "OK, this deserves a family photo. All three of you smile!"

The picture he lined up had Mabel standing, hugging the piglet, cheek to cheek. Beside her, and looking up adoringly, was Waddles, about two-thirds as tall as she was when he was sitting on his haunches. She rested her left hand on his head.

"Everybody say 'Oink!'" Only Mabel obliged, but Dipper took the photo.

"Send it to me, send it to me!" Mabel said.

"OK," Dipper said, laughing. "It looks pretty good. Annnd send."

"It's gonna go right in my scrapbook!"

All that morning Mabel played with Widdles. Dipper roamed the Shack restlessly, looking at the work Soos was putting in. Adjacent to the gift shop he had added a long, narrow room with a counter and stools—a fast-food restaurant to be, he explained. "That way we can hold onto the lunch crowd, dawg," he said.

"Looks great," Dipper said. "Uh, Soos—where's Wendy?"

Soos looked uncomfortable. "Oh, well, about that, you know, and junk, dude. She's not workin' here every day durin' the off season, you know. Just a couple afternoons a week to help clean an' help with the baby an' stuff, and then sometimes Saturdays. But she'll be in touch, dude, I'm sure."

And Soos was right. At nine o'clock on the dot, his phone went off, and there on the screen was Wendy, bundled up in a coat and looking apologetic. She seemed to be in the woods somewhere. "Hey, Dipper," she said in a mournful voice. "I'm so sorry I can't be there, dude."

"What—where are you?"

She sighed. " _Camping_." She made it sound like a dirty word, and not one of the interesting ones, either. "My dad, like, insisted. I got to skip the apocalypse camping at Christmas, but he and my brothers, like, nearly starved to death. None of them can boil water without burinin' it. So he made me come along this time. When are you guys goin' back to Piedmont?"

"Monday. Our flight leaves Portland about eleven in the morning," Dipper said, feeling his heart down around the level of his knees.'

She made a face. "That totally sucks. We won't be back in town until dark. I'm so sorry, Dipper."

"Well," he said, forcing a smile. "I don't guess it can be helped."

"Not when my dad gets all bull-headed an' stubborn," she said, looking grumpy. "I miss you like crazy, man."

"I miss you too, Lumberjack Girl."

They couldn't even talk for very long—Dipper heard Manly Dan yell, "Wendy! Need you here right now!" and with a grimace, Wendy said a hasty goodbye.

Dipper didn't want any lunch. In the early afternoon, Mabel came up to the attic—without Widdles or Waddles, probably for the first time since she'd arrived—and said quietly, "What's wrong, Dipper?"

"Wendy's not going to be here," he said flatly.

"Uh—you want to talk about it?"

"No."

Still Mabel didn't leave. "Dipper? You sound mad. You guys—you didn't have a fight?"

"No."

"C'mon, brobro. This is Mabel. You can tell me anything."

Dipper sat up on the bed, his eyes feeling hot. "I would've done _anything_ to get here just to see her," he said. "If Mom and Dad had said no, I—I would've run away from home to get to her. But her dad tells her to go on a stupid camping trip, which she doesn't even want to go on anyway, and she goes. I—I thought she—cared for me more than that."

Mabel sat beside him and put an arm around him. "Dipper, c'mon. Wendy likes you a lot—"

"She _likes_ me," Dipper said sarcastically. "Tough luck that I _love_ her, huh?"

Mabel took his hand. "You know better," she said. "If you were in trouble, she'd be here. Nothing could keep her away. But she's not on her own, Dipper. She's sixteen, but she's the woman of that household, and the guys depend on her. Take her for granted, even. You know what Manly Dan is like. Really, would you want her to disobey him an' get, like, weeks of grief just 'cause you wanted to see her for a couple days?"

Dipper stared angrily at the floor, feeling his cheeks getting hot. "You don't understand."

"I think I do," Mabel said. "I'm sorry, Broseph. C'mon, let's do something fun. Our golf clubs are in the closet. Set up an attic mini-golf championship course?"

"Not in the mood."

"You just want to be left alone?"

"If you don't mind."

"OK. But I'm here for you."

She started out the door, but Dipper called to her: "Mabel?"

"Yeah?"

He swallowed. "Am I turning into some kind of jerk? 'Cause I feel like it sometimes."

She shrugged. "Nah, not really. You're a teenager, Dip. So'm I. I know it's hard. Your body's changing in ways you don't understand—hey, Grunkle Stan had a book in his office that might help! I'll see if I can dig it out. Anyways, brobro, you're gonna have these weird moods 'cause of the pituitary gland. C'mon, you're better than that. You jumped off a freakin' _cliff_ to save me from Gideon! You tried to punch out an interdimensional demon! You're not gonna let a little bitty _gland_ push you around, are you? Don't' brood about it, Dip, please. Think about all the good times you've had with Wendy."

"There are a lot," Dipper admitted.

"And there'll be more. So call her when you can. Don't blame her for not being able to see you this one time. If you have bad thoughts, don't let 'em fly out of your mouth, OK? It'll be all right. You'll see."

"You're always an optimist," Dipper said with a sour little smile.

"Well—I got two pigs!"

Despite himself, Dipper had to laugh a little.

But—he hardly came out of the attic for the rest of the weekend, and when they flew back to California the next Monday, he sat at the window seat staring silently down at the passing clouds and earth and feeling very, very sorry for himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**3: Magic Dark and Light**

Track and field season would officially begin the third week of February. Dipper's coach, Mr. Dinson, had been yelling at him for two weeks: "What's up with you, Pines? You were running better before break than you are now! Shape up, kid! Get your mind on what you're doing!"

"You could just cut me from the team!"

Dipper had almost said that twice. _Let Dinson pick on me one more time_ , he thought, _and I'll say it._

His guitar lessons had almost stalled out, too. Somehow he didn't have the will to practice the way he used to do, and he kept repeating the same mistakes, in the same order, until he started to dread the walk down the street to the Morgensens' house. Maybe the guitar was another dumb mistake.

Somehow, although he struggled, he did keep his temper around the house. Most of the time, anyway. He pretended to be interested when Mabel showed him videos of Widdles and Waddles. He did his homework mechanically without much concentration. Somehow he kept his grades up—though he uncharacteristically made a B on an algebra test he should have aced, and try as hard as he might, he found it difficult to finish reading the assigned novel in English class, _Tess of the d'Urbervilles._ He counted six _was-es_ and one _were_ in the first paragraph, and the story just didn't grab his attention. It was a slog.

Everything sort of came to a head on the night of Friday, February 14. Valentine's Day. Mabel had gone off to the high-school Valentine's hop; Dipper pleaded an upset stomach and lay on his bed in his room, strumming his guitar, not really playing, just drifting from chord to chord. He finally put the instrument aside and just lay staring at the ceiling.

Mabel didn't get in until after ten. He heard the front door open, heard Mom say something, heard Mabel's voice and her footsteps on the stair. She tapped on his bedroom door and opened it. "Hi, Dip," she said, stepping in. "You feeling better?"

He wasn't sitting, exactly, but lying with his back propped against his pillows, his arms crossed, his hands behind his head. He shrugged as much as anyone in that position could. Mabel looked—well, actually she looked pretty in her dress. It was white with red Valentine hearts printed on it like polka-dots. She wore just a little blush and a little pink lipstick, and she'd done her hair up. Looking at her, Dipper said, "You really look nice, Sis."

She twirled around once, showing off. "Thanks. With those bags under your eyes, you look like a dark magician put you under a curse." With real concern in her voice, she said, "Tell me, Dip, are you really sick?"

He gave her a gloomy smile. "Not sick, just down in the dumps. But I mean it, Sis, you look great. Beautiful smile, beautiful hair and eyes. You know, your—no offense—baby fat's going away."

"No offense taken." She closed the door behind her and giggled. "And it's not going away. It's just migrating to new places." That much was true. She definitely had a figure now—one that attracted boys, sometimes to Dipper's intense irritation. And she rarely wore those baggy, concealing sweaters any more. Her new ones were, well, sort of tight in places.

"Did you have a good time at the dance?" he asked, finding himself sort of hoping the answer would be no.

She shrugged, too, and glanced sideways at nothing. "Yeah, mostly. Trey asked me to go steady with him."

"Trey Moulter? Oh, man! I hope you turned him down."

She made her _yikes!_ face and looked a little worried. "Not exactly. I turned him _maybe_. Put him off."

"He's a jerk."

Mabel played with the red belt of her dress. "Wellll. . .yeah, he can be. But other times he can be, you know, nice."

Dipper tilted his head suspiciously. "You don't _really_ like him, do you?"

She shrugged and confessed, "Dunno."

Sitting up on the bed, Dipper glared. "Has Trey been, you know, doing things to you?"

Mabel blushed. "No." She bit her lip. "Yes. Um, you know. I mean we've fooled around a little."

 _I will kill him. I will kill him and tear him into little tiny bleeding pieces and burn those and crush the ashes and sell them for fertilizer._ But aloud, Dipper said, "Mabel, you're too young for that stuff. You know that, don't you?" When she just nodded, he asked, "How serious are these fooling-around things?"

"Umm. . . second base, and I think he's trying to slide to third," she said with the ghost of an apologetic smile.

"No, no, no!"

"Yeah, I know, I know," she said, dropping her head and sighing. "I feel guilty about it and all. That's kinda why I put him off." She glanced back up, a pleading kind of glance. "Dipper, have you and Wendy ever—"

"We've danced, we've kissed, we've held hands, and that is _it_ ," Dipper said flatly. Then, in an empty tone, he added forlornly, "I don't know if we'll ever even do any of those again."

Now Mabel looked sad. "You still haven't called her?"

He shook his head. "Don't know what I'd say. But she hasn't called me, either."

Mabel came over and sat next to him on the bed. "Go on and call her. You'd feel better," she told him.

Dipper shook his head. "I don't think so. But I don't know what's wrong with me."

She yawned. "Wish I could help, but I don't know what to tell you, Dipper. It's, you know, guy stuff. Well, I gotta get to bed, Brobro. Hey, cheer up. Read some of your stuff you wrote in your first journal last summer, or maybe read what you wrote in your copy of Ford's Journal 3. Good times, Bro, good times. We've had lots of them, and they'll come again. 'Night."

Without enthusiasm, he said, "Hope so. 'Night."

He didn't read anything at all, but turned off the light and slipped between the sheets in his clothes, the way he always used to do. As he began to drift into sleep, he looked with his mind's eye for Bill Cipher. . . but Bill was only to be met in the Mindscape when Dipper was near the stone effigy, and that was six hundred miles away in Gravity Falls.

* * *

When June came round at last, Dipper felt excited to be on the bus again. He wouldn't admit it to Mabel, but as he rode along, Wendy's fur hat warm—well, hot—on his head, he started thinking, _Now everything's gonna be OK again._ The eighteen hours went by like so many seconds, and there they were, getting off the Speedy Beaver bus in front of the Shack.

Funny, nobody was around to greet them. Mabel ran straight in, the door banging behind her. Dipper lugged his suitcase up to the porch and set it down there with a grunt—

"Uh, Dipper?"

Goosebumps on his arms. He had heard Wendy sound exactly that same way once before, just once—in the bunker, when the Shapeshifter had disguised itself as her and for a terrible moment Dipper had thought she was dead before she spoke from behind him.

He looked around and saw her, standing with her hands in her jeans pockets over where the trail through the woods started. She wore his pine-tree cap.

"Hey," he said, walking over to her. He realized she didn't look quite so tall any longer. "Guess I've grown a little more."

"Yeah, I see you have." She smiled at him, swapped caps with him, and reached for his hand. "Come walk with me to our place."

He couldn't even remember the walk to the bonfire clearing, but somehow, as if it had been conjured up, there lay the log right in front of them. She sat down on it and patted it, and he perched beside her. "Look, Wendy," he said, "I'm really sorry I never called you. It was mean of me. It's been a terrible rotten spring, but that's not really an excuse. Forgive me?"

"Sure," she said. When he tried to put his arm around her, she gently stopped him. "I thought of calling you lots of times, Dip. But sometimes it's better to say things face to face. You know that, don't you?"

Dipper felt clammy, chilly even in the June sun. "Uh—I guess so."

Wendy sighed. "Dipper, I'm sorry. I've met someone else."

"What? No!"

He fell backward off the log—fell back and kept falling, plummeting—

" _No!"_

 _Something had grabbed him!_

" _You're MY puppet, kid!"_

" _Damn it, Bill!"_

"'S just me, Dip." Wendy, holding him tight, clutching him. But—but she held him way _too_ tight, keeping him from breathing, and she was grinning in a weird way, a sadistic, evil way—

"Who are you?"

"Dipper! Dipper! Don't hit me! It's me! It's me—"

* * *

"—Mabel!" She was hugging him. "Sh, sh, shhh, don't wake Mom and Dad. It's OK, Dipper, I got you. It's OK. You were dreaming. A bad one."

Dipper couldn't stop shaking. "I—I thought I was back in Gravity Falls, and Wendy—she—I don't know what she was turning into—" He focused on Mabel. "Oh, my gosh! Your nose is bleeding. Did I—?"

She sniffled and gave him a crooked smile, tears gleaming in her eyes. "You got a pretty good right on you, champ. Tissue?"

Dipper grabbed one from the box on the far-side bed stand and handed it to her. She pinched her nose with it. "Nothing broken," she said, sounding like someone with terminal sinusitis. "But you bopped me pretty good there."

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," Dipper said, hugging her. "I'd never hurt you—"

His phone chimed.

Dazed, he looked at the bedside clock radio. 2:50 a.m. "That's Wendy's tone," he said, recognizing the tune.

Mabel mopped the last red splotch from her nose. "Well, answer it, dumbo!"

Dipper snatched up the phone and thumbed it on. "Wendy?"

"Dipper?"

And they both said simultaneously: "What's wrong?"

Mabel whispered, "Dip, are you crying?"

He shook his head and waved her off. "Oh, my God, it's so good to hear your voice," he said, shaking uncontrollably.

"Same here, Big Dipper. I dunno, I was asleep and I woke up with this crazy panicky feeling that something awful had just happened to you!"

"No, no. Had a nightmare, that's all," he said. "Must be ESP or something. Uh. Happy Valentine's Day. One, uh, one day late."

She chuckled just a little. "I got the e-card you sent me. Very cute, man. Didja get my snail-mail card?"

"No, I didn't," Dipper said, feeling let down.

"I mailed it Tuesday!" Wendy said. "It better get there by tomorrow at least!"

Mabel whispered, "I'm going," and she tiptoed out of the room.

"Look, Wendy," Dipper said as the door closed, "I'm so sorry I haven't called you. Things are real rough at school right now, and I was bummed that you couldn't meet us back last month when we came up for that weekend. I guess I was kind of crazy. I was mad, you know, in the angry way, but I wasn't mad at you."

"You should've been," Wendy said. She was speaking very quietly, and Dipper guessed that she didn't want to wake her rowdy siblings or her explosive father. "It was so stupid. Stuck out there in the woods wantin' to be with you. If I'd had a chance, I would've slipped off and thumbed a ride to Gravity Falls to see you—but I swear my dad's like a ball and chain sometimes, man." After a silence, she added, "I'm sorry, Dip. I flat blew it, man. I should have found some way, and I didn't. I'll make it up to you. I promise."

"Don't be like that," Dipper told her, finally controlling the shakes. "It's my fault. Mabel says it's all hormones, but—I don't know. I'm so antsy all the time, and I blow up at nothing, and I hate myself a lot sometimes. Like I hate myself for not calling you. I was just mad at the world and I—Wendy, I was scared I might take it out on you. Sometimes I can't help myself, and I've been so scared. I guess I'm a coward."

"You are not!" Wendy laughed, her throaty, low laugh. "Man, I've seen so much proof of that. You just gotta believe in yourself, man, and you'd better do that. 'Cuz I sure do!"

"You're not mad at me?" Dipper asked.

"No way! You mad at _me_?"

"Never." Another awkward pause. "So—did your school have a Valentine's dance?"

She sighed. "Oh, yeah, tonight. Yesterday now, I guess. It's early tomorrow, isn't it? Anyways, I went for about thirty minutes. It was totally lame. Thompson, like, tried to spike the punch? But he got a bottle with, like, French writing on it that he couldn't read and so _he_ thought it was cognac or some junk, but it was a pint of fancy vanilla flavoring. People were pukin' in the corners, man!"

Dipper chuckled. "Uh—did you dance?"

"Nope. Not even once. Didn't feel like it. Your school have a dance?"

"Yeah. Mabel went. I wasn't in the mood."

"Dude, don't be like that! If you stayed away because of me, that makes me feel awful."

"I stayed away because of _me_ ," Dipper said. He took a deep breath. "On top of everything else, I'm worried about Mabel. She's been seeing a guy named Trey, and he's—he's just not right for her. I know he's not. But she told me tonight they've been fooling around. Getting physical, you know."

"How bad is it?" Wendy asked.

"She said second base."

"Girls experiment, Dip. And before you even start, don't you dare ask me about myself! You'll find out one day. Anyhow, I don't think Mabel would let it get real serious. But I'll phone her tomorrow and talk to her if you want me to."

"Yeah, please do. It might help," he said. "She can't talk to Mom about this stuff, and it just makes me crazy when she talks to me."

"Uh huh," she said. "You get ready to kick ass, am I right?"

"Yeah. I'd probably get my fool head broke," he said, using one of Stan's phrases.

"I kinda guessed you'd go to the mat," Wendy said. "The way you tackled that demon in the Fearamid."

"It's not just my getting crazy about that stuff with Mabel. There's also, well, something else, I mean, talking of Trey and Mabel and all," Dipper said after another pause. "I worry—a lot—that I'm not right for _you_."

"Get out of town!"

"No, really. I'm a bookworm, I'm a nerd, I'm awkward, I always doubt myself, I have like no muscles—you can stop me at any time."

"Don't have to, man. You know you're lying."

"Well, I _feel_ that way sometimes. _All_ the time, lately. You know you deserve better than me."

Wendy kept her voice quiet, but she sounded almost fierce: "Listen to me, Dipper, and listen good, OK? I heard you say something to Gideon back durin' Weirdmageddon. You might not have known I heard you, 'cause it was after we had our wreck and I'd screwed up my head and was kinda in and out of it. But I _did_ hear you. You remember what you told him?"

"Uh—no?"

"You said, 'You can't force someone to love you. Best you can do is strive to be someone worthy of loving.'"

Dipper blinked. "Oh. That. I just said that because he was—"

She cut him off: "No, no, don't run it down, man. That's some mature junk you laid down right there! Think about it. Nobody's perfect, right? But Dipper Pines, I'll tell the whole world—you're a guy worthy of being loved. You _are_!"

"Oh, Wendy—"

Her voice became very soft and gentle: "'S all right, man. 'S OK for a guy to cry. Listen to me, I'm cryin' too. Sh, sh. Imagine I'm lyin' right there beside you now. I'm huggin' you, man. Holdin' onto you. Keepin' you warm. You just cry it out and I guarantee you'll feel better tomorrow. Trust me. Girls know about this stuff. Sh, sh, sh. I got you. I got you, Big Dipper."

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:**

 _Monday, February 17—I haven't written anything in this book for a month, so maybe I should record some of my speculations about paranormal phenomena. Let's start with magic._

 _There must be different kinds of magic. Some good, some bad, of course. Some of it might work by long distance. I didn't think I'd ever meet up with any of either kind, evil or good, here in dull, boring old Piedmont, California. But there IS some of the good stuff here, I think, maybe piped in from Oregon._

 _Why did Wendy have that feeling just when I had the nightmare? THAT'S some kind of magic. Mabel says it's because Wendy's my soul mate, but then her soul mate has been Waddles and before him, it was a ball of yarn._

 _I kind of suspect Bill had something to do with it—but why would he help me out with Wendy? That makes zero sense. I mean, wouldn't Bill be more likely to be behind my bad mood? Her spooky ESP thing simply doesn't have his fingerprints on it. Next morning, I accused Mabel of asking Wendy to call me—but she wouldn't have known to have her call me during a horrible dream, and Mabel looked so hurt when I said what I did that I know she didn't do it, so I apologized to her. Awkward sibling hug and all that, with pats._

 _Do Wendy and I actually have a kind of ESP that even Mabel and I lack? It's a mystery, and mysteries make me feel—well—_

 _OK, I'll admit it: I feel better. Oh, I know high school's going to have its ups and downs. And so am I, now that I'm a real teen and not just a technical teen._

 _Mabel took that dumb book of Stan's from the Shack last month, and yesterday she made me read through it. She said that Stan did a dramatic reading to her when he thought she was me—the electron carpet thing—and she's not sure she'll ever fully recover from the shock of it. But at least I know now that mood swings are typical for teenagers._

 _The trick is to be able to ride them out, I guess. I'll try. All I can do is try._

 _But thanks to Wendy's magic, today at practice I ran the hundred-meter in 10:55 seconds, my personal best time ever. That's not far off the record set for high-school freshmen back in 2006. Coach told me I was shaping up. Guy Creighton, he's a Junior, distance runner in the 1600-meter, and a complete jerk, well, he tried to snap my butt with a towel in the locker room after my sprint trial, and I caught the towel and took it away from him and even standing there in just my shorts, I totally scared him off. He even apologized. Lots of apologies flying around Piedmont these days._

 _OK, so this week I am definitely going to finish reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles if it kills me—Mabel thinks it possibly might. It's a real downer, according to Mabel. She drew a picture of a crazy-looking Tess for her scrapbook and labeled it "Tess of the Disturbervilles." After she finished reading the book she said, "In my report I give it a thumbs-up, but in real life, I'd really like to give it a boot to the head."_

 _Something else good happened today. This afternoon I finally nailed the song that I've been stalled on in my guitar lessons. Pitch-perfect, correct tempo, everything. Mr. Morgensen smiled and said, "Now, that is more like the real you!" And I know I can play it again the same way any time._

 _And after the lesson was over, I even went home and finished composing my first song._

 _I hope Wendy will like it._

 _Because it's all about her, and the magic she sent to me._

 _Huh. This must be what the frog felt like after the princess kissed him!_

 _Magic._

 _Yeah._

 _That's what it is._


	4. Chapter 4

**4: Running on Empty**

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Tomorrow is March 1, and that means my first JV track meet. It's no big deal, just five schools (it's the "quint school meet," which makes no sense to me, because shouldn't that be "quintuple?"), and we're going on a bus up to Oakland Park High for the meet. Unfortunately, three of our best runners are down with the cruddy flu that's going around._

 _I'm down for the boys' 100 meter, which runs at nine a.m. Then I have nothing else to do for the rest of the day, so I guess I'll sit on the sidelines and cheer. Dad is driving Mabel up._

 _Thinking about them watching me, and me maybe failing, I've got my usual case of butterflies in the stomach—abdominus lepidopterus, Grunkle Ford would call it._

 _I just hope I won't come in last._

* * *

In fact, Dipper came in first in the Junior Varsity heat—with a very good time of 10.70 seconds. He grinned as he trotted off the track and to the stands, because he could hear Mabel cheering above everyone else: "That's my brother, the _winnah_! Woohoo!"

It almost made up for being listed in the program as Mason Pines (F).

"Hey, Coach," Dipper said to Mr. Dinson, "is it OK if I go up and sit with my family?"

Glancing around, Dinson said, "You can meet up with them for lunch and stay with them after that. Hang around, though. I may need you at ten."

"Huh? Ten? That's the 800, Coach."

In a voice dripping with sarcasm, Dinson said, "I'm glad you can read the schedule, Pines. American education succeeds again. Yeah, it's the 800, and Clowse was supposed to run it for us—Get in there, Macavoy, you waiting for an engraved invitation?"

Dipper watched Chuck Macavoy go out onto the track and start stretching for the 110-meter hurdles. "Uh, Coach?" Dipper asked, "what about Frank Clowse?"

"He's sick in the school nurse's office," Dinson said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the high school complex. "Got this gosh-danged flu, looks like. I'm gonna have you fill in for him."

Dipper sank onto a bench. "Fill in for—I haven't trained for the 800!"

Dinson pulled his Lions' cap down to shade his eyes, watching the runners line up for the 110-meter hurdles race. "You run every day, though. I've seen you do three miles around the track."

"Yes, but—that's just, you know, for general fitness, not for competition."

Dinson sighed. "Chill. I don't expect you to _win_ , Pines. But I want us to have a man in every event, and that's the only one I don't have covered. Just do your best. Wetherby, stretch out now! The 110 will be over before you know it!"

Slumped on the bench, Dipper thought, _Every time something good happens, something bad's right around the corner with brass knuckles on both fists._

The hour sped by, and before he could prepare even mentally, the announcer called the 800, his name went out over the PA system as a substitute, and he sort of crept to his starting position. The other four runners from the different schools towered over him—or so he thought. All taller than he was. Longer legs, longer strides.

 _I am gonna get killed._

But crouching down, muscles tensed, he told himself, _Coach said just do your best._

The starting gun barked, and all five runners bolted forward. One, a lanky African-American kid from Consett High named Cooledge, took the lead right away, with a runner from Dawsen City six strides behind him, Dipper bringing up third, and beside him a long-legged guy from Taylorville pacing him, just half a step behind. The fifth runner they left behind—maybe he felt a touch of flu, too.

A hundred meters, and Dipper reflected, _I could've been first if I'd run all-out—but then I'd have nothing left._

They made the turn, and the Dawsen City guy slowed bit by bit. Dipper reached him, drew even with him—the Dawsen City runner shot him an alarmed glance and tried to put on a burst of speed, but nearly stumbled, and Dipper drew ahead of him. Now Cooledge remained the only man in front of him. _I'm in second! That won't mean a disgrace if I can—keep—it—up!_

But just before he reached the halfway mark, Dipper felt his rhythm slackening. He clenched his teeth and willed his legs to pump. _Can't fall behind the others!_

Either the Dawsen City guy or the one from Taylorville had drawn close behind him—he couldn't tell from the sound of the footfalls which lane the runner held—and, with the breath burning in his lungs, Dipper realized _I don't have anything left!_

What was it Scotty always said in those reruns of the old Star Trek show that had addicted Dad? "I'm givin' her all she's got, Cap'n! She won't hold together much longer!"

His legs began to noodle beneath him. _Can't fall! This is so unfair of Coach! Got to finish the race on my feet at the least! Can't fall!_

Six hundred meters, and Cooledge still ran like a machine six strides ahead of Dipper. Dipper thought that he would pass out. He could feel the pulse pounding in his temples.

And then, between one stride and the next—

It was as if he'd grown a third lung. He felt his muscles settle into a new, easier rhythm. He lengthened his stride, he pumped his arms.

Seven hundred meters down, just one hundred to go, into the last lap now!

He drew closer to Cooledge, and closer still. Cooledge sensed him and sped up. Dipper kept closing, though not fast. He caught glimpses, fragments of everything around: There sat the crowd, yelling and cheering. Round the turn. Coach on his feet, pumping his fist and screaming. Onlookers pressing against the chain-link fence that surrounded the track. Closer and closer—the finish line—

"Aww!" Dipper crossed it just one long step behind Cooledge, who took a few more strides, slowing down, and then stepped onto the grass, put his hands on his knees, stooped over, and vomited.

Dipper's legs felt like noodles again. He went up to Cooledge and asked, "Hey, man, you all right?"

Cooledge nodded and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You—you had me—goin' there, man. Saw—you win—the JV hundred. Good sprint, man!"

"You won this one hands down," Dipper said. "Congratulations." He held out his hand.

Cooledge chuckled. "Sure you want to do that? I just kinda puked and wiped it off my mouth."

Dipper held out his left hand. "This one'll do OK. You ran a great race, man."

Cooledge gave him a left-handed handshake. "Thanks."

Dipper left the track. Dinson actually clapped him on the back. "See? Knew you could do it."

"Couldn't win, though," Dipper said, panting for breath.

The coach patted his shoulder. "You made a damn good try. Don't tell Mr. Mooney I said _damn_."

Despite his heaving lungs, Dipper chuckled. Nobody in school seemed to like Myron Mooney, the vice-principal. Or as Mabel called him, Moron Mooney. Back in the fall he had threatened to confiscate Wendy's beloved trapper's hat from Dipper—so now it stayed at home, safe until the summer, when he would—he hoped—return it to her.

"Hey, Pines," Dinson said, "You did good. Stick around for the awards, but go join your family if you want. You ridin' back with them?"

"If it's OK."

"Yeah, Pines, you earned it."

He climbed up to where his dad and sister sat. Mabel jumped up and hugged him, yelling, "This is my brother, people!" Then, just as loud, she yelled, "Yuck, you're wet and stinky!"

"Just sweat," he said as his dad moved over to let him plop down on the bench.

"Were you supposed to run the half-mile?" Dad asked him.

"It's the 800-meter, Dad, and no. We had a sick man, though, so Coach told me to go in."

"If it'd been a mile, you'd have beat him!" Mabel said with a fierce scowl.

"If it'd been a mile, I think I would've dropped dead," Dipper told her.

Piedmont didn't do too badly: firsts in the boys' 100-meter sprint and the 1600-meter distance run and also in the girls' 110-meter hurdles and 200-meter sprint. Dipper's second-place win in the 800-meter, and three third-places in all.

Dipper had managed to speak to the guy announcing the awards, and thankfully, when his turn came, the man said into the microphone, "A first-place award and a second-place one, too, for Dipper Pines."

Much better than "Mason."

That afternoon, on the drive back home, both twins sat in the back seat. Dad drove humming along to eighties music on the radio. "Reminds me of Mabel Land," Dipper muttered.

"Not as annoying, though," Mabel said. "You know, I feel sort of guilty about Dippy Fresh. I guess he blew up into confetti."

"No one deserved it more," Dipper told her.

After a moment of silence, Mabel asked, "Hey, Dipper? What happened in that 800-meter thingy? You were like _blarrgggh_! And then all at once you were like _hero time_!"

"He got his second wind," Dad said from up front. "It happens when a runner is in good training."

"It felt good," Dipper confessed. "Like I'd been running on empty and then got a refill in mid-run."

"Second wind," Mabel said. "So that's what that expression means. I always thought it had something to do with farts."

"Mabel!" Dad yelled, but he was laughing.

"I'm getting my second wind!" Mabel yelled, then stuck out her tongue and made fart noises that sent both Dad and Dipper into hysterics.

For a wonder, Dad managed not to crash the car.

* * *

 _I got a little bronze badge pinned to a blue ribbon for the first-place win. Mabel says it reminds her of a sheriff's badge in a Western movie, and I guess it does. It's a five-pointed star inside a sort of flat hoop. The hoop part is engraved "GREATER OAKLAND QUINT SCHOOL TRACK AND FIELD 2014" On the star is a number 1. It's small, only about an inch in diameter, but shiny._

 _Before she even asked, I told Mabel she couldn't have it. Instead she got the red ribbon they gave me for second place in the 800 meter. "Goin' straight in the scrapbook!" she announced._

 _We got home, I showered—"'Bout time!" Mabel said. Remembering Robbie, I was tempted to take Dad's three different kinds of cologne and his aftershave out of the medicine cabinet in his and Mom's bathroom and douse myself in them, just to show her that I'm an actual real teenaged guy._

 _But . . . I didn't._

 _Dad told Mom all about the meet, and she said, "That's nice," but she didn't stop cooking dinner. A roast chicken with dressing, salad, glazed carrots, and those string beans that Mabel doesn't like except for sticking them up her nose._

 _But she didn't do that this time because her boyfriend Trey came over to have dinner with us._

 _Trey makes me sick. He's so polite to our parents—"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Pines," and "Your wife is a wonderful cook, Mr. Pines," and I know he rags on them and makes fun of them when they're not around._

 _Calls dad a geek and tells Mabel that Mom has a stick up her butt. I mean, I've heard him say that! And she laughs at it!_

 _But when I complain, Mabel says "He's just teasing, Dipper."_

 _Right._

 _After dinner, he and Mabel went into the den to watch a DVD, and I tagged along._

 _Yes, OK, as chaperone. This jerk needs one!_

 _Mabel sat on his lap! They were in Dad's recliner, and she sat in his lap with her arm around his neck! They turned off all the lights except the TV, but I sat on the sofa close to them and turned on the reading lamp. And pretended to read._

 _They didn't make out or anything that I saw, but when the movie was over and Trey left to go home, they stood outside the front door for a long time. Too long if you ask me._

 _Mabel gave me a kind of guilty look when she came back inside and we went upstairs, but it has been a good day, and I didn't want to spoil it, and I didn't say anything to her._

 _One day soon, though, I know I will. We'll have a serious discussion, the three of us._

 _Me, Mabel, and Trey._

 _When I get my second wind, we're going to have some words._

 _I'm just afraid that no matter what, we're all going to wind up hurt. I don't want that, I don't. But I'm thinking there's no way out of this without us getting mad and upset and hurt._

 _And I'm afraid Mabel will hurt worst of all._


	5. Chapter 5

**5: Heartbreakers**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Friday, March 14, 2014: Just before the closing bell at school this afternoon an ambulance came screaming into the parking lot. Nobody knew what was going on, but the EMTs hustled into the building and just a few minutes later, I heard, hurried out, rolling a—what is that word? A gurney? That doesn't look right._

 _Rolling one of those stretchers with wheels, with somebody on it all covered with sheets so nobody got a good look, and then they put the stretcher in the ambulance and it fired up its siren and tore off for, I guess, the hospital._

 _No practice today, so I met Mabel to catch the bus home. She'd heard about the ambulance, but nobody knew anything about what had happened, though she said she'd pestered her teacher._

 _Then on the way home her phone chimed, and she answered it and turned pale and grabbed my arm. "No! No! It's not true!"_

 _Whoever was on the line said something else, and Mabel just dropped her phone and it fell on the floor of the bus. I bent over and picked it up, and she was crying. "What is it?" I asked, really scared._

" _Mrs. Pepper!" she said. "They said she got real sick and someone called the ambulance for her! Oh my God, how can I find out about her?"_

 _Mrs. Pepper is the art teacher, and she's Mabel's very favorite. They're a lot alike—Mrs. Pepper doesn't wear sweaters so much, but she dresses in really wild outfits, white stockings with peppermint-red stripes, purple tennis shoes sparkling with sequins, blouses that have, like, layers of lace, all different colors of it—Dad says she's like someone out of the hippie generation, but I don't know about that. I mean, she's old, but not that old. I suppose she must be about sixty._

 _Anyway, when we got home, Mabel ran straight to Mom, and Mom made some calls and then she had Mabel sit down on the sofa. I sat next to her, holding her hand, and Mom said, "It's serious, Mabel. Mrs. Pepper had a heart attack. They have her in intensive care in Sisters of Mercy now. There's no report on her condition, though."'_

" _We have to go there!" Mabel yelled._

" _Honey, we can't! We're not family. They wouldn't let us in, and if she's in intensive care, they won't let her have visitors."_

 _Mabel jumped off the sofa. "I'm going!"_

" _Stop her, Dipper," Mom said, and I went after her._

 _Mabel was nearly running down the street. "Wait up!" I called. She didn't, but I can outrun her now, and I caught up and held onto her arm. She tried to jerk away._

" _Mabel, listen," I said. "When Dad gets home, I'll see if he'll drive us over to the hospital, or at least see if he can call and find out something about Mrs. Pepper. Come on, that hospital's at least ten miles away. I know it's rough, Sis."_

" _Oh, Dipper!"_

 _She clung to me and buried her face in my shoulder and cried._

* * *

Saturday morning, and the news came that Mrs. Pepper was critical but stable, whatever that meant. Their dad drove Dipper and Mabel over to Sisters of Mercy Hospital, a building made of brick, tan and glossy and interrupted with great expanses of windows.

It took some talking and some negotiating, but at last they were able to go to the ICU. Dad said he'd wait in the waiting room. Dipper and Mabel had to put on paper scrubs and caps and paper covers over their shoes. Mabel said, "We look like we're dressing up for Summerween," but her voice held no humor.

A nurse led them to a strange kind of futuristic room, circular, with a round desk in the center and three nurses and two nuns behind it. Rooms opened up off the big circle all the way around, rooms darkened and echoing with pings and clicks.

"Mrs. Pepper is in I-5," the nurse said quietly. "I can let you have ten minutes."

"Thank you," Mabel said.

The twins edged into the room. Mrs. Pepper, her steely-gray hair disheveled, lay propped up against a pillow. An oxygen tube fed into her nose, and machines tethered her. One gave out a continuous pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygen readout. Others hissed or buzzed.

Mabel went to the edge of the bed and said tremulously, "Hi, Mrs. P."

The woman blinked, and in a voice foggy with exhaustion, she asked, "Now, who is that masked woman? The Lonesome Ranger?"

Mabel glanced around to make sure no nurse was near and then quickly pulled down the mask. "Just me."

"Mabel, my sweet one," Mrs. Pepper said slowly. She reached up to touch Mabel, but an IV drip in the back of her hand kept her from managing. "Oh, heck, darn, poop!"

She surprised Dipper into laughing. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's one of Mabel's things!"

"Oh, I know," Mrs. Pepper said. "I've heard her exclaim that more than once when an art project's not shaping up. I suppose I gave everyone quite a scare."

"You've got to get well," Mabel said. She reached out and with care clasped the old woman's hand. "We can't get along without you at school, Mrs. P!"

"I shall try my best," Mrs. Pepper told her. "Do you know, you're the very first person to visit me? I'm so glad it was you. You're a ray of sunshine. And this must be the twin you talk so much about. Dipper?"

"Yes, that's me," Dipper said. "I've heard a lot about you, ma'am."

"Ma'am!" Mrs. Pepper said, and she laughed, though the laugh came out almost as whispers. "You're a polite one, sir. Do you take good care of Mabel?"

"Well—I try."

"Bless you for that. Mabel, sweetest, I don't suppose you'd be able to slip out and bring me a great big juicy hamburger? No, no, I'm joking. But the term 'hospital food' is like 'customer service.' The words don't seem to connect logically."

Mabel laughed more than the joke deserved, and a nurse came and said, "Time to go now. Our sweet lady needs her rest."

"Oh, poop!" Mrs. Pepper said. "I hope you can come and see me again."

"Count on it," Mabel said.

* * *

Over the next school week, Mabel went every day. Dipper couldn't because of track practice, but when Friday—another break from track practice—came again, Mom drove them both over. They got to Sisters of Mercy at 4:20, and visiting hours would end at 5:00.

Mabel knew the drill, and the hospital staff seemed to know her. They suited up and went back down the corridor to ICU and straight to room I-5.

It was empty.

"She's out of the ICU!" Mabel said. She dashed to the round desk and when a nurse looked up, she said, "Excuse me, but where's Mrs. Pepper been moved? She was in room 5."

The nurse said in a quiet voice, "I'm so sorry, Miss. We lost Mrs. Pepper this morning about eleven."

Mabel's tone became indignant: "Lost? How could you—"

Dipper thought Mabel was going to faint. She braced herself on the desk and sagged. He grabbed her around her waist. She looked at him as if not fully recognizing him and said in a terribly small squeak, "Dipper, Mrs. Pepper is dead."

A nurse had to get a wheelchair. When Mrs. Pines saw her daughter and son, she immediately came to Mabel and hugged her. "She's gone, isn't she?" Mrs. Pines asked.

Before the nurse could speak, Mabel nodded.

"It was a shock," the nurse said. If your daughter needs to rest here for a while, that will be fine."

Mabel shook her head. "I want out of this place," she said. And then she jumped out of the wheelchair and yelled: "Let me out of this place!"

Somehow they got her quiet and took her back to Mom's car, though she jerked and twitched and tried to push them away. Dipper sat in the backseat with her, holding her hand. "It's okay to feel grief," Dipper said.

"Hell with grief!" Mabel fumed.

Her mother said, "Young lady!"

"Mom, I'm _not_ grieving. I'm _mad!_ How could Mrs. Pepper die? Somebody else should've died, not her! She was—she—the best—I loved her—oh, Dipper."

And then the storm of tears broke, and Mabel shook with sobs.

On Monday at school they heard that a memorial service would be held the following Wednesday at a small Catholic church near the neighborhood where Mrs. Pepper had lived. Any student who wished to attend could be excused. Dipper and Mabel both asked to be allowed to go—though Dipper had to clear it with his coach—and finally they got passes.

Again Mom drove them. She said she'd never been to a Catholic service, but both Dipper and Mabel had—when Soos's dad had died—and Mabel told Mom to wear a head covering. "Well," she said, "I'd do that anyway."

Mourners—more than half of them teens from the school—jammed the little church. The priest introduced a skinny, balding old man as Amos Markel, Mrs. Pepper's older brother. He thanked everyone for coming and said a few halting words about his sister. The priest conducted the Mass, and then it was over.

Mabel and Dipper made their way to Mr. Markel. Mabel said, "Mr. Markel, Mrs. Pepper is—was—no, _is_ my favorite teacher of all time. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you, little lady," he said with a sad smile. "Elizabeth loved teaching. She said when her husband passed away, oh, more than ten years ago I guess now, that teaching kept her young."

"She seemed young," Mabel said, and she began to cry.

"There, there," Mr. Markel said. "Elizabeth was sixty-three. Not very old, but no longer young. What's your name?"

Mabel told him, and she also introduced Dipper.

"Dipper?" he asked with a smile.

"It's a nickname, sir," Dipper said. "I don't care for my real one so much."

"Wait—Mabel and Dipper, sure," the old man said. "The day before she passed away, Elizabeth told me that you came to see her every single afternoon. She was so proud of you, Mabel. She told me you have lots of talent and a love for life and you're going to be a great artist if you want to be."

"Really?"

"Really." He thought for a minute. "I'll have to arrange to take care of my sister's estate," he said. "It's not very big, and I can't use her art supplies and such, and I hate to just sell them. Would you like to come to her house, oh, Saturday afternoon, let's say, and pick out something to remember her by?"

"I'd love that," Mabel said.

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _I really didn't expect it would end this way, but I can't say I'm surprised._

 _Turned out that Trey and Mabel sort of had a movie date for Saturday. I mean, he'd ordered tickets online and everything. Then Saturday morning when he showed up at the house, Mabel told him she couldn't go because instead she had to go to Mrs. Pepper's house to choose a souvenir to remember her by._

 _Trey's stupid mouth got him in trouble. I always knew it would one day. "The old biddy's dead and gone!" he told Mabel, pretty mad, I guess. "You can't be serious about wanting to remember that crazy old bat! Come on, Mabel, this is a good movie!"_

 _One of our neighbors who saw it all told me that Trey may need stitches. He called Mabel some ugly names when she started beating on him, and he had a few more for Dad, Mom, and, yep, me too. "Scrawny chicken-necked nerd" was the term that got his nose smashed, I think._

 _The lady told me he said even worse things, but refused to repeat them. "He wobbled off on his bicycle," she finished, pointing to some small, still-fresh spatters of blood on the street. From the splash pattern, I gathered that he'd had some trouble keeping the bike balanced and was weaving a good bit. Good for Mabel, I thought._

 _Anyway—Mabel and I actually walked over to the house, because it was only about three miles and Mabel wanted to cool down. Mr. Markel opened the door when we got there. He'd been crying—"Been looking at old family photos," he told us—but he seemed at peace. "Come on back into her studio," he said, and he led us into a sunny room cluttered with easels and canvases and paints and glue and buttons and yarns and feathers and—_

 _To make it brief, the place looked a lot like Mabel's room._

 _Mabel didn't search for very long. On a coat tree near the back door hung a crazy knitted scarf—a striped rainbow scarf, except with dozens more hues than any rainbow ever had. It reminded me of the light of Mabel Land, with colors that only bees and art students could see. "May I have this?" Mabel asked in a choked voice._

 _In a kind tone, the old man said, "Sure, little lady. My sister used to knit those by the dozen, and she was really proud of that one. Elizabeth is pleased to give it to you." Mabel darted a sharp glance at him but didn't speak. "Oh," he said with a little smile, "I know she knows you have it in your hands right now. And I know she loved you and she's happy that you'll have her scarf. Think of her when you wear it."_

" _Always, and even when I don't," Mabel said._

 _So we walked back, on a warm day—hey, it's California—and Mabel wore that scarf wrapped around her neck, trailing behind her, and she wept without sobbing every step of the way back to our house. No sound, but the tears rolled down her face and dripped from her chin._

" _I'm going up to my room," she told me as we walked to our front door._

 _Mom, who had no idea of what had happened out on the front lawn between Trey and Mabel, asked me if she'd be all right, and I told her, "I think she will now."_

 _About an hour later I went up just to check on her. Mabel sat on her bed, running the scarf through her fingers again and again. The scrapbook lay open on her pillow, and I saw she had been working on it. She'd pasted in the torn-in-half movie tickets that Trey had printed out, and on each side of them she had used a red marker to draw in half of a broken heart._

 _She gave me a sorrowful smile, and I hopped onto the bed to sit next to her. She dropped the scarf onto her lap hugged me. "Oh, Dipper. I've been kind of cray-cray about stupid poophead Trey, haven't I?"_

" _Well—you know I didn't like him."_

 _She sniffled. "He could seem so nice when we cuddled. But he's not nice at all. He said the meanest things. He's just a—a selfish bastard."_

" _Mabel!"_

" _Well, he is! You know what he said? He told me that you didn't like him because you wanted to_ _—_ _to_ _—_ _you wanted to do me yourself! That's just sick!"_

 _I shrugged. "Yeah, it's sick, but he was close, in a way. I do want you for myself, Mabel. But I want you to be my twin sister. To be the Alpha Twin, in fact. To keep on being the beautiful goofy sister who drives me crazy and makes me laugh when I want to cry. To be my best friend." I held her hand. "And because of all that, I don't want you to get hurt. Not once. Not ever."_

" _Boy," she said, leaning into me. "Life sure screws you around."_

 _I put my arm around her. "Yeah, it does. You and me both, in fact."_

" _You know what?"_

" _What?"_

 _She stuck her chin out._ " _I'm gonna do what Wendy suggested that time we went after the Society of the Blind Eye. I'm gonna forget about boys. Boys are the worst!"_

" _Did she tell you that?"_

" _Well, yeah, but she wasn't thinking about you. It was, you know, Robbie."_

 _I rubbed her back, between the shoulder blades. She was tense as a bowstring drawn too tight. "Hey, Mabel, do me a favor. Call Wendy and unload about all this, OK? It would do you good, and she loves to hear from you."_

 _Mabel took a few deep breaths. "Yeah, OK. Wendy's always cool. She'll give me good advice, and I do need to talk to a girl—no offense, Dipper, but you're a boy, and for stuff like this, boys are no good to talk to, and so I'm done with 'em."_

" _Even me?"_

" _Nah," she said. "You're not a regular boy. You're my brobro. But the rest of them—pfffft!"_

" _Forever?"_

 _She took a deep breath. "Um, no, I guess not. But I'm finished with them at least for a while. Until I get over all the hurt, I guess, like Wendy—"_

" _What about Wendy?" I asked._

" _Um, forget I said that. She told me something, but I promised her I wouldn't speak about it to anybody else in the world. Let Wendy tell you when she's ready. But I'll just say, you know, she's had her own problems with guys. Like you said, Robbie and all. Don't push me on this, OK?"_

" _A promise is a promise," I said, patting her shoulder. "OK. No questions asked, Sis."_

" _But, Dipper—"_

" _What?"_

 _She sounded to me like Joan of Arc making a pledge to the people of France: "This summer when we get to Gravity Falls, I swear by my favorite sweater—I solemnly swear, and not hell nor all its minions can stop me—I swear by all that's holy, Dipper, I am finally going to have an epic summer romance!"_

 _What could I say?_

 _Except, "I hope you do, Sis. I really hope you do."_


	6. Chapter 6

**6: Little Touches**

Mabel got the idea the week after Mrs. Pepper's funeral. The kind, elderly Mrs. Pepper had been Mabel's art teacher, and her favorite. Her replacement, Mr. Stottard, was a skinny young man with a mustache and thick glasses who kept emphasizing the rules.

Rules for perspective. Rules for materials. Rules for color matching. Rules for proportions. Mabel began to think of art class as a cage with bars made entirely of rules.

Mrs. Pepper had been just the opposite—rules counted as pointers leading through a wonderful imaginative process. She urged students to go beyond the rules, to explore, to be creative. She liked experimentation and a touch of the unexpected in art. Everyone was unique, and their art, she explained, reflected that.

On the other hand, Mr. Stottard liked uniformity. The first thing the class had to do when he took over was to sketch a still life of a blue ceramic pitcher and a matching bowl with a banana, a red apple, a green apple, and an orange in it.

Twenty-four sketches, and according to him they should all be identical. "Just draw what you see, and even though this is a charcoal sketch, give each element the shading and range that reflects the color values in black and white."

When they turned in their sketches, he put them up on an easel, one by one, and whacked at them with a pointer. "Leon, look how flat your apples and orange are! You've got to indicate the roundness with shadows! Suzy, this is a mess! Get it right the first time and you won't have all these smears where you tried and failed to fix it! Mabel, this looks more like a face than like a pitcher, bowl, and fruit! Do you need your eyes checked?"

"No," Mabel had said. "But the way they're arranged, the pitcher is a long face, the banana's a nose, the fruit's a lopsided mustache, and the bowl is his lower jaw. He has an underbite."

"Imagination has no place in representative art!"

At lunch, a smoldering Mabel said to Kyle and Leon, two fellow sufferers, "I wish we had Mrs. Pepper back. Art used to be fun."

"It's not any longer," Leon said. "I wanted my sketch to look like a poster, not a photo. But Stottard won't even listen to me."

Mabel sighed as she toyed with her veggie sandwich. "I wish we could do some kind of tribute to Mrs. Pepper."

"That'd be cool," Kyle said. "She taught here for, like, forever. I mean, the kids who were in her first freshman art class are, like, in their forties now! There must be hundreds of them who remember her."

"Thousands," Leon insisted.

"I got an idea," Mabel said.

Over the next few days, she spent many, many study periods in the library—but not studying. Instead, she went through stacks of yearbooks, beginning in 1984, when Mrs. Pepper first came to teach at the high school. "Aw," she said, "she was only three and a half months from retirement when she died!"

But more important, Mrs. Pepper could be found in that yearbook and every one after it, in group photos with all of her art classes and with the Arts Club. And the yearbook identified every single student.

"Dipper," she said after her first dive into the yearbooks, "You're always doing stuff for me for no reason and never asking for anything in return."

"Yes?" he asked, looking up from his copy of Journal 2, which he had read completely through only four times.

"I want you to do it again!" Mabel said, raising a fist to the sky—or at least to the ceiling of Mabel's room.

"Whaaat are you up to?" he asked suspiciously.

"Here." She handed him two notebook-filler pages crammed with names—about fifty-four names to a page, in two columns, for a total of over a hundred. "These kids were in Mrs. Pepper's first art classes in 1984. I want to track them down!"

"Whoa!" he said, looking up from the sheets. "That's, like, crazy!"

Mabel put her hands on her hips. "You can't do it?"

Dipper shrugged. "Well, I would, but I don't see how."

"You _have_ to see how! This is _important_ to me, Dipper!"

"OK, but let me read through the names." He got a third sheet of paper, blank, and a fresh pen, one with few bite marks on it yet. A third of the way down the first column, he said, "Fred Pederfeld. There's a Pederfeld family over on Oakland Avenue, isn't there? I think the dad's name might be Fred." He jotted the name down.

Eventually he found a total of five names that he recognized—all of them male, because, as he said, "I guess most of the girls eventually married, and they changed their names."

Fortunately, Fred Pederfeld was listed with Directory Assistance, and Mabel called his number. A woman answered.

"Hi," Mabel said. "Listen, this is Mabel Pines, and my family doesn't live very far from yours. Is your husband Fred Pederfeld?"

The woman sounded surprised. "Yes, he is."

"Um—did he go to the local high school?"

This time the woman laughed. "Yes. He was on the football team. He's still telling stories about the big game."

"May I please speak to him?"

"Just a minute."

It took about that, and then a man's deep voice said, "Fred Pederfeld here."

"Hi, Mr. Pederfeld," Mabel said. "You don't know me, but I'm Mabel Pines and I'm a freshman at the high school. When you were in high school, did you by any chance have an art teacher named Elizabeth Pepper?"

He chuckled. "I sure did! She was great."

"I was in her class this year," Mabel said.

"Really? How is she?"

"Uh—I'm sorry, Mr. Pederfeld, but she, uh. She died more than a week ago."

A profound silence, then softly, "I'm so sorry to hear that. Was she still a fun teacher?"

"The best."

"You're really lucky to have had her."

"I know. That's kind of why I'm calling. I'm looking for all of her old students . . . ."

* * *

You can't win them all, and two of the five names Dipper had written down didn't pan out—one had no phone number on record, and the other did, but the man who answered was only twenty-seven and had moved to Piedmont from somewhere out east and had never gone to the local schools. His name just happened to be Charles D. Smith, but as he said, "There must be thousands of us."

But on the bright side, Mr. Pederfeld knew the whereabouts of eleven people named on Mabel's list. And Jim Calladay, the third one she managed to call (the second was one of the washouts), not only knew Fred but eight others with whom he was still in touch. "We play bridge with Lainie Mommus—she's married to Dan Tyler now, though, so you have the wrong last name for her. And Reuben and Sarah McKimson are members of our church. They met in high school and they both had Mrs. Pepper's class . . .."

In all, the three guys that Mabel managed to get in touch with knew how to contact a total of twenty-two other former students. Then Dipper got his brainstorm.

"E-LifeBook!" he said. "I'll bet about half of them already have accounts. And you can create groups on it and invite people to join!" He ran to his room and brought his laptop down to the living room, where Mabel was making handwritten notes on her list.

"Okay, let me go online . . . man, I wish Dad would spring for a faster modem and router."

From the den, Dad called, "Costs money, Dipper!"

"You're in computers, Dad!" Dipper returned, rattling away at the keys. "OK, here's my E-LifeBook page. Now I'm gonna create a group. What should we call it?"

"Hot Peppers!" Wendy said.

"Um—well, maybe not," Dipper told her. "We could get people thinking it's about Mexican restaurants."

"Yeah, or strippers," Mabel mused.

"What was that?" Mrs. Pines called.

"I'm thinking of becoming a stripper, Mom!" she called back.

"Don't do it. Too annoying to go grocery shopping with three hundred one-dollar bills," her Dad said from the other room.

Mabel chuckled. "Yeah, good point. Hey, Dip, how about calling it Art by Mrs. Pepper?"

"How about. . . 'Mrs. Pepper's Class'?"

"Brobro! Perfect! You _can_ be creative!"

A couple of days later, Dipper said, "Networking pays, Sis. Networking pays."

"Mrs. Pepper's Class" had over five hundred members, with new ones signing on every day. By then Mabel had gone through every yearbook and had a list of 3015 names, counting this year's classes. "I just wish we could get them all," she said.

But some had moved to parts unknown, some had died, and some probably had drifted so far away from art class that they had only vague memories. After another week, the site had registered sixteen hundred-odd names, and the increase slowed to only a few a day.

Mabel started to get phone calls: Julie Christopher, formerly Julie Mosley, was now a Ph.D. and the chairperson of an art department at a Midwestern university. John D. Alain was the art director for a glossy national magazine. Another dozen people were artists or art teachers—all because of Mrs. Pepper, they told her.

Dipper helped Mabel form a sub-group, just twenty members, all of them professionals in the art world and all of them on board with her idea for a tribute. Dr. Christopher advised her on how to do what she had in mind and offered to take care of the actual production in her personal studio. Mr. Alain said he'd send her samples of similar works and would offer critiques as she got underway.

Dipper digitized page after page of the yearbooks. Mabel wanted them all involved, all three thousand-odd of Mrs. Pepper's students—even the ones they couldn't reach, even the ones who had passed on.

The others on the web site obliged her by emailing photos of themselves, just three inches by two inches, as she'd requested. Some chose pictures from when they were teens, but most just did selfies. One said, "I'm a lot dumpier and plainer in this picture from today than when I was Homecoming Queen, but Mrs. Pepper taught me to be myself!"

Mabel borrowed Dad's computer to do the actual arranging and tweaking. She emailed the files to Mr. Alain, who always returned them promptly with advice and suggestions for tweaks. When she and he were both satisfied, she sent the very large file to Dr. Christopher, who called her and told her it was perfect and that she would process it. "Look for a package next week," she said. "A pretty big one!"

So in mid-April, Mabel and Dipper marched into the principal's office and asked for an appointment. Mabel clutched a long, heavy mailing tube. The secretary asked what it was all about. Mabel said, "It's about this school and what it owes to Mrs. Pepper!"

The secretary consulted the principal, Mrs. Hethskew, and she said she'd see them. She was a fiftyish woman with coppery hair going gray and a thin hard face but kind blue eyes. "What's this about Mrs. Pepper?" she asked.

Mabel said, "I represent over three thousand of her former students. We all think there should be a memorial here at the school for her. She was a great teacher, and she taught us all art and more than that! I mean, she touched our lives, Mrs. Hethskew, and made them better. So we've cooperated, and I've made this. Dipper, little help?"

Mrs. Hethskew blinked her eyes at what they took from the tube and unrolled. "This is—remarkable," she said, getting up from her desk and staring at it.

"One of Mrs. Pepper's first students, Dr. Julie Christopher of Columbus University in Missouri, printed this on canvas for us. It needs to be stretched and framed," Mabel said. "I can't do that, but Mr. Stottard could."

Dipper added, "And a dedication ceremony would be nice."

That didn't happen until the first week in May. Then Mrs. Hethskew called a special assembly. Mabel stood with her on the stage—Dipper had politely declined because as he said, "This is all you, Mabel. I just helped a little." Behind the principal and student sat Mr. Stottard, and beside him a thin, mustached old man, and an easel held a draped picture, a very large one, about four feet by six.

Mrs. Hethskew said into the microphone, "We lost a wonderful teacher and one of my best friends this year, Mrs. Elizabeth Pepper. Her student Mabel Pines decided the school needs a memorial to her, and her thousands of former students agree. Mabel, will you unveil your work and explain it?"

Mabel took the microphone. "Thank you, Mrs. Hethskew. Teachers, students, you know we all gripe about school. I'm talking to you, too, teachers! You know you do it, am I right? But with all our griping, we need to remember that school shapes us. It teaches us things that are important, and we learn not just in the classroom, but from each other."

She choked up a little. "Mrs. Pepper is still my favorite teacher of all time. I got in touch with every single one of her students that I could, and took photos of all the others from the yearbooks, thanks to my brother Dipper, the computer geek. You're the best, bro." She turned. "Our new art teacher, Mr. Stottard, prepared the work for display. Do you want to say a word, Mr. Stottard?"

"You're doing fine," he said. "Go on."

"OK. This is Mr. Amos Markel, Mrs. Pepper's brother. He's already told us he doesn't want to speak. But I'll ask him and Mr. Stottard to unveil the tribute that all of Mrs. Pepper's students have put together."

The two men stood up and removed the cloth draping the easel. Everyone gasped.

It was a portrait of Mrs. Pepper, head tilted, a smile on her face, a twinkle in her eye.

"Hi, Mrs. Pepper," Mabel said softly into the microphone. Then, more loudly, she said to the audience, "This isn't painted in brush strokes. When you get close, you'll see that this portrait is made up of photos of all Mrs. Pepper's students, past and present. Their pictures are arranged by size and color to make up a mosaic portrait. I had a lot of help on this, and I thank everyone who pitched in."

She walked back to the portrait. "When you get a chance, look at her up close. You'll see we're all there. We're all part of her, just like she's part of all of us. This is going to hang right in the entrance hall. We'll see her smile every morning when we come to school. Would everyone who's ever been in one of her classes please stand now?"

About three hundred did, out of the twelve hundred students. They started to clap. Everyone joined in.

When the applause died down, Mabel said, "Art should be beautiful, but it should make us think and feel. Please, when we see Mrs. Pepper's portrait, let's all remember that we touch each other's lives and when we do, we change each other. Let's try to do that for the better. Thank you, Mrs. Pepper. And thank you all."

* * *

Later Mabel pasted a news story from the local paper into her scrapbook. It had a photo of her standing beside her work of art.

But on the same page she pasted a yellow three-by-five card with a note scrawled on it. She was proud of having received it.

"Dear Mabel—I apologize for criticizing you. Your art is wonderful. I'm proud to be your teacher and will try to learn from you and all my students. Benjamin Stottard."

Though she had meant the tribute as a kind of ending—it was a beginning, too.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: Always Room for One More**

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Saturday, March 28, 2014, San Jose, CA: It's about 9 pm, and I'm writing from a room in the Dazed Inn. What a day! Our school had a much larger track and field meet here, nearly two dozen schools competing in all. First we ran prelims, where we had to qualify, and I was one of the eight that made the cut._

 _Then this morning I ran in the hundred-meter and won! First place! That's two I've got now! New time: 10:44, another personal best. Piedmont did great overall, five firsts, six seconds, and nine thirds (boys' and girls' together, I mean). Coach Dinson is, like, over the moon because we're ranked among the five best schools in the association._

 _Mom and Dad drove down me down and came to the meet and we spent last night and will spend tonight in the motel. Mabel didn't come along, because she's working on a big art project all about her favorite teacher, Mrs. Pepper. I wrote earlier about how Mrs. Pepper passed away all of a sudden and it hit Mabel hard. This is her way of healing, I think._

 _Anyway, for the weekend Mabel's staying a couple of houses down from us with her friend Esmeralda (Meral to her friends, pronounced mer-RELL), who was in her art class and is also involved in the project._

 _Mabel told me Meral has a crush on me, but you can't believe Mabel about things like that. She does like to tease me. Anyway, as I told Mabel, my heart belongs to another! She stuck out her tongue and went pffffffbbbbt! So I guess she's her old self again and over Trey Moulter._

 _So, yeah, I did good in the dash, but what I'm really stoked about is tomorrow! 'Cause right here in San Jose is the Westminster House!_

 _What, gentle reader (if anybody but me ever reads this), is that? Well, I'll tell you: it's just the most mysteriousest, hauntedest house in America, that's what! And tomorrow while Mom and Dad go shopping and sightseeing, they're gonna drop me off for the Grand Tour._

 _I mean, this is serious! Admission is forty-five bucks! And this isn't the Mystery Shack I'm talking about here! It's the Westminster House!_

 _OK, so the Westminster family were like the Remingtons and the Winchesters and the Colts back in the days of the Old West, right? And they manufactured and sold repeating rifles—hundreds of thousands of them, for the Union Army during the Civil War, and then for the US Cavalry on the frontier, and for any cowboy that wanted one, I guess, and the company got stupid rich. Guns in the 19th century were like oil in the 20th._

 _The Westminster Arms Company was based in Dedham, Massachusetts, where the owners lived. And Mr. Eben Westminster, the founder of the company, had an elder son named Aloysius, and he inherited the business and married a girl named Minerva, and in 1870 he died at his home in Massachusetts, leaving her ninety million dollars, which was a lot of money back then, and she also continued to receive a portion of the profits from sales of the rifles. Let's say she wasn't hurtin' for moolah, as Grunkle Stan would put it._

 _So the legend is that after her husband died, Minerva Westminster went to a séance and tried to talk to his spirit, and he came to her through a medium and warned her to go as far west as she could and "build a house big enough for all the ghosts of all those whom our rifles have killed."_

 _Spooky! But she believed it. Grunkle Stan again: "The more dough in the pocket, the fewer brains in the head!"_

 _So anyway, Minerva went all the way to California, bought a great big dairy farm, had every building on it torn down, and sold all the cows, and in 1872 she began to build the biggest mansion you could imagine. She lived to be nearly 100 and died in 1938. And to the day she died, she never stopped building the mansion! There were carpenters at work literally 24-7, every day of the week, Sundays and Christmases included (she did pay overtime, I think). Every time they'd finish one room or fixture or decoration, she'd start them on another!_

 _The house started out on five hundred acres, but later owners sold a lot of the land, and now it stands on twenty acres—still a lot of yard for a city. Since the 1970s, it's been a museum and tourist attraction, something I have a little experience with. It's supposed to have extensive and beautiful gardens, and people come just to tour through them._

 _But the interior interests ME! Nobody even knows for sure how many rooms the place has! Mrs. Westminster had séances every night, and her husband's spirit supposedly gave her directions for rooms and porches and towers and so on. She never had an architect! She just sketched out what she wanted, and her foreman made the plans and built. Inside, the whole house is supposed to be a maze._

 _I read that they've counted 54 bedrooms for sure, and the estimate is that the house has about 220 rooms in all (more than this motel!), but they keep finding new ones! Because sometimes Minerva would have a new hallway built and would take out the door into a room, so now the room is sealed up on all four sides is and unreachable, like Grunkle Stan's old wax museum was for years._

 _There are long winding halls that just end, and when you try to go back, you run into branches of other halls you don't remember seeing. Stairs that go up to a ceiling and stop—no door. On the higher floors, you might open a door and find there's no balcony or steps—you're just standing in a doorway 30 feet off the ground. And people swear they see and hear spooky things all the time._

 _Dad and Mom say I can have a good four hours there. So I can take the two-hour walking tour and then just wander around myself. I hope I can take my anomaly detector—I slipped it into my backpack before we left home._

 _Oh, man, I wish Mabel could be here. Or Wendy. Half the fun of ghost hunting is doing it with someone who you know has got your back._

 _But, hey, I'm experienced. I'm sure nothing will go wrong._

 _Ugh. I can't believe I even WROTE that. Now I have goosebumps._

* * *

The Westminster Mystery House Museum was due to open at nine a.m. Dipper arrived at eight-twenty and still found himself fourth in line to get in. Ahead of him stood a family of three, a mom, dad, and a fourteen-year-old daughter. "Are you going to be all right on your own?" the mom asked.

"Definitely," the girl said. Her voice sounded soft and musical to Dipper. "You guys go on and meet me back here, OK? I'll be fine."

"All right," the mom said. "We're going to take the garden tour at eleven and then go to the automobile exhibit, so we'll met you at the garden entrance at twelve-thirty."

"Make it one," the dad said. "Your mom has to take pictures."

"One o'clock, then." The mother smiled brightly at Dipper. "This looks like a nice young man behind you. Maybe he'll go through with you."

The girl gave him a faintly exasperated look. Dipper found her definitely cute: long, straight, browny-blonde hair, darker arched brows, eyes that looked shy but happy, and when she wasn't exasperated, a big wide white smile. He thought at first she was skinny, but then realized the proper word was _toned._ She looked like an active girl.

She was sort of pale—reminding Dipper of Wendy—and she wore black jeans, a white top with an open light-blue vest over that and a man's hat, a black fedora. "Sorry, guy," she said. "Mom, dad, I don't need a bodyguard!"

"All right, suit yourself," the mom said. "One o'clock at the gate to the gardens, remember."

"Got it."

The parents strolled away, and the girl gave an exaggerated sigh. "Sorry about that," she said. "Hi. I'm Eloise Niedermeyer. That's a cool hat."

"Thanks, it's a fur trapper's hat. I'm Dipper Pines," he said. "Glad to meet you."

She smiled—she had a cute smile, too, the left side of her mouth ticking up so it was lopsided. "Dipper? Seriously?"

He shrugged. "It's a nickname, but everybody calls me that. It sounds like an insult, I guess, but it isn't, and it's better than my real name, don't ask, so I don't mind."

She laughed this time. "Dipper. OK. I've read about this place. I can't wait to see it!"

"Me, too," Dipper said. "All those legends."

They turned and looked at the sprawling, spreading, rambling mansion—a Victorian gingerbread manor in some ways, a medieval castle in others. The mustard-yellow walls had been shingled and inlaid with strips of dark brown wood. The roof had been tiled with brilliant red slates. Two fat round towers—not symmetrical, though—broke up the façade, and the place seemed to have hundreds of windows, not to mention spires and domes and steeples and even a tall bell tower visible through a forest of chimney. Dipper said, "Oh, man! If ghosts were real, you'd find them in a place like this."

"Ghosts _are_ real," she assured him.

"Have you seen one?"

Eloise looked past him, but the next people in line were a family group, and they were sorting out tickets and paying no attention to the boy and girl ahead of them. "Yeah," she said, lowering her voice. "There's a ghost that stands halfway up our stairs from the basement. Three times I've turned on the light to go down there, and the ghost about scared the pee out of me!" She turned red. "'Scuse me."

"No, I understand! What does it look like?" Dipper asked.

"Uh, well, it's hard to say. Most like a woman wearing a robe or gown, but she's wispy and faint, just all sort of gray. And transparent. You can't see any details because of that. She stands there with her hand on the rail and seems to stare up at you—you can't see any eyes, or any features, really, just a gray blank face. And then she fades away. I know you don't believe me. Nobody ever does."

"Hey, it's OK," Dipper said. "Actually, I do believe you, because I've seen a bunch of ghosts."

Eloise's bluish-gray eyes glittered with interest. "Here?"

Dipper shook his head. "No, different places, at different times. One was a lumberjack who died 150 years ago when he got struck in the head with an axe. The axe is still lodged in his skull. Or the ghost of an axe, I guess. It's not material."

"Shut up!"

"No, straight true," Dipper said.

Eloise had stepped closer to him. She smelled a little like peppermint—toothpaste, Dipper guessed. She asked, "Where was that? Not here at the Westminster House?"

"No, a little town up in Oregon called Gravity Falls. It's totally weird. Well, the whole Gravity Falls Valley is weird, but that weirdness is what really got me hooked on investigating hauntings and ghosts."

She gave him that lopsided skeptical smile and a raised eyebrow. "Investigating. Yeah, right."

"I'm not lying!" Dipper said. "My uncle Stanford Pines is a well-known paranormal investigator. The lumberjack ghost, well, the family that lived in the house he was haunting called me in to exorcise him."

Now she seemed interested. "Did you do it?"

Dipper rubbed the back of his neck. "Um, well, kinda. Me and this girl named Pacifica Northwest between us laid him to rest. She actually finished the job, but earlier I was the one who trapped him in a silver mirror."

Eloise hugged herself and gave a shudder, though she still smiled at him. "Even my parents don't believe me about _our_ ghost. I'd love to see something like that. Heck I wish they'd see it and then they'd know I'm right. What time is it? Five more minutes! C'mon, people, open up! Hey, the 'rents totally embarrassed me, Dipper, but, um, would you mind walking through the tour with me?"

He grinned at her. "No, not at all. It'll be fun to have another believer to talk to. I guess you guys are visiting?"

"Yeah, on vacation, just touring California. How'd you know?"

"Your accents. You sound like you're from the Midwest."

She giggled. "Pretty good! We're from Winnemunka, Minnesota. Nobody's ever heard of it. It barely even shows up on the map. So are you from here?"

He shook his head. "No. I mean, not actually from San Jose, but yes, I was born in California. My folks and I live in Piedmont. That's a town about fifty miles north, near Oakland. Which, you know, is across the bay from San Francisco."

"Oh. Did you come to San Jose just to see the house?"

"Uh, no. I'm kind of on our high school's track team, junior varsity, and we had a match yesterday."

Her eyes widened, and she looked him up and down with what seemed like fresh interest. "Oh, you're an athlete! How'd you do in the meet?"

"OK," Dipper said, trying to sound modest. "I took first place in the hundred-meter dash."

"Cool! I'm on the hockey team at Winnemunka High. I guess not many schools out here have hockey teams, huh?"

"Not many. We don't at ours, anyway."

"I'll bet you've never even seen snow," Eloise told him.

"No, you'd lose that bet." Dipper fished his wallet from his jeans pocket and found the photo he wanted. "See, this was taken up in Gravity Falls, the town that I was talking about, back during Christmas Break." He took out a photo and handed it her.

She looked at it and laughed. "I don't know about Gravity Falls, but your snowmen are definitely weird! I've never seen one in a fez before. Who's this with you? Your girlfriend?

"No, that's my twin sister Mabel. She didn't come with us on this trip because she's busy with something for school."

"Oh, twins! Are you guys, like, identical?"

"Well, we look alike, but no, we're not identical twins. If we were, we'd both be the same gender. We're what they call fraternal twins." He didn't tell her that the odd-looking snowman in the photo was actually Mabel's pretty faithful representation of Grunkle Stan. He put the picture and his wallet away. "I was gonna ask something about hockey. Um, got it, what, uh, position do you play? I mean on your team?"

She laughed. "Yeah, I kind of got that's what you meant. I'm a forward. You know the game?"

"Ice hockey? Uh, that would be a no."

Becoming very animated, Eloise said, "OK, the forwards have the most fun, 'cause they're the ones who try to score and assist other team members with moving the puck. There are three forwards, and three kinda imaginary lanes—"

The crowd behind them murmured and shuffled. Dipper said, "Hey, they're unlocking the doors!"

"Ooh! I'll finish telling you about hockey later!"

"Great. Uh—want to go in together?"

"Yes, please!"

A thin young woman in an antique costume—she looked like a servant girl from the 1890s, with a long black dress, a full white apron, button shoes, and a little lacy white cloth cap—emerged from the big front doors, came to the front-porch steps where they waited, unfastened a velvet rope, and then said, "Welcome to the Westminster Mystery House! In a minute we'll all go inside the reception hall, and from there I'll be your guide through the public rooms. A few announcements: we ask you not to take flash pictures. There are ten places where you can get great photos without using a flash, and I'll point those out. Along the way I'll tell you some interesting stories, and I'll try to answer your questions.

"Keep together with your party! It can get dark and confusing, so hold hands if you don't want to get separated and perhaps remain trapped her for the rest of your life . . . and beyond! Experts estimate that at least a thousand ghosts reside in the Westminster House, but . . . there's always room for one more! Finally, as we go up to the reception desk, I'll ask each one of you to hold his or her own ticket. If you're ready for mystery and the unknown, you're ready for the Westminster Mystery House. Keep a sharp lookout for ghosts—our guests have seen them more than once. Now step inside—if you dare. Whatever you do, though, remember this: Show no fear!"

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin, but ghosts had nothing to do with that. Eloise had reached to clasp his hand. Hers was a little clammy and sweaty. "Don't let go," she said, and he noticed that the skin of her arms had become prickled with goosebumps.

"I won't," he promised, risking a little hand squeeze, which she returned.

 _Ghosts? Hah. Bring 'em on!_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: Stairway to Nowhere**

* * *

"The steeples on the roof are actually light shafts, as you can see," the tour guide said in an echoing room. She stood in the center of a splash of bright illumination on the parquet floor. The tourists ranged around the four walls—none of them with windows—and carefully avoided sitting on the overstuffed armchairs or sofa, all of which had computer-printed and laminated _PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH!_ notices on them. Dipper had almost grown used to the sharpish scent of furniture polish. The antiques must require frequent attention with polish and cloths, he thought.

The guide paced and turned so she addressed all parts of her audience: "Originally, this room had windows overlooking the backyard in that wall, but when Minerva extended the house back, all the rooms on this side lost the windows and the light. The back wall there was rebuilt to remove the windows. Now, in the days before electric light, a big room like this one would be very dark, even with oil lamps or candles."

"How about chandeliers?" a dumpy lady asked.

"Some of the rooms had them. You noticed there were three big chandeliers in the grand ballroom, but that also has a balcony and French doors to let in daylight. There's supposedly another ballroom somewhere, but at some time the builders closed it off and now it's lost. It was reportedly an interior room, and we'd like to find it to see how it was lighted. The search goes on."

"Why doesn't this room have a chandelier?" the woman persisted.

"A chandelier with a hundred candles is really a pain to use. The candles have to be replaced within hours, and imagine the difficulty of lighting a hundred of them at a time. Mrs. Wesminster didn't much trust servants and usually had only a cook, five young maids to clean the house, and a yard man for the gardens. Nobody who could easily lower a hundred-pound chandelier, fill it with candles, light them, and raise it again, you see. This was a music room originally, but when it was closed off, it was unusable because it was too dark. So in compensation, Minerva had the workmen build an eventual total of eighteen steeples across the roof, which are hollow and topped with heavy glass pyramids that send daylight down."

"Like those railed-off openings in the floor we saw upstairs," a man said. "I noticed the ceilings in them all had the same square hole as this one does."

"Right," the guide agreed. "And the light wells give light to all the rooms they pass through. I'm in sunlight right now, even though there are no windows. If you stand here and look straight up, you can see that the ceilings of this room and the three above us all have cut-outs, those railed-off openings, so the light can stream down and provide natural illumination, and that bright shining thing up there at the very top isn't artificial—that's a reflection of the sun."

"Refraction," Dipper murmured. "The glass is like a prism and bends the light and sends it down here, it doesn't reflect it."

Eloise gave his hand a little squeeze. The group had roamed and wandered all over the house, had ventured up staircases with stair treads only three inches high—the stairs were _long_ because of that—and had come close to getting lost in three different corridors that meandered so much no one without a compass could hold on to their sense of direction. She had held his hand the whole way, and he had begun to feel a little antsy about it, thinking of Wendy.

But . . . what the heck, he wasn't going to _kiss_ Eloise or anything, and he certainly wasn't going to ask for her phone or email later. This was just two teens who got along together being friendly. Nothing romantic. _Yeah. I'll keep telling myself that!_

"Now the steps behind this," the guide said, walking to the wall behind Dipper and opening a narrow door, "are the only ones that lead down to the basement."

People craned to see. The visible part of the stair slanted steeply down, and from the blackness cool air scented with earth wafted over them. The guide said, "Because of safety issues, we can't go down there, but I will say that experts who have examined the basement tell us the Wesminster House was built on a floating foundation. Does anyone happen to know what that means? Anyone?"

When no one else spoke up, Dipper quietly said, "It makes the house earthquake-resistant."

"Very good!" the tour guide chirped, closing the door. She came over and stuck a gold-star sticker on his vest, reminding him of Mabel. "This young man is exactly right. A floating foundation is a reinforced concrete slab designed to distribute the building's weight smoothly and evenly over a soft subsurface, which is what we have here in San Jose. The building's walls aren't firmly attached to this slab. Because of that, the structure's supports aren't brittle, so it's easier for the house to shift and move a little during an earthquake without completely collapsing. Now, the house has survived two 6.9 quakes. Does anyone know when? I'll bet _someone_ does!"

The crowd chuckled, and everyone looked at Dipper. "Um, the first one would've been in 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake," he said. "Only that one did damage the house. There used to be a kind of stepped brick tower toward the back that was seven stories tall. The upper stories were damaged and that part of the mansion was lowered to four stories, same as the rest of the house—except for the detached bell tower in the enclosed courtyard. That's the equivalent of six stories, I read."

"I am gonna run out of stars!" the guide said, laughing. "How about the second earthquake?"

"The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989," Dipper told everyone. "The epicenter of that quake was actually closer to San Jose. But since the house was lower then, and thanks to the floating foundation, nothing much was damaged."

"You _have_ done your homework." The tour guide handed him a sheet of twelve gold-star stickers, with one missing. "Take them all!"

"Thanks," Dipper said, folding it carefully and tucking it into a pocket of his backpack. "My sister will love these." As soon as he'd finished, Eloise took his hand again.

A few minutes later the tour ended, and the guide told everyone they could go back for a second look at anything that was interesting. "But the next tour begins at one p.m.," she added. "Now, you guys have green wristbands. That means that the staff will kick you out fifteen minutes before that tour starts, so keep an eye on the time, OK? And remember if anyone has any questions, you can find me in the reception room—if you can find the reception room! Young man, can you tell them the secret?"

In a way, the ability to answer her questions pleased Dipper, but in another the questions themselves made him the center of attention, and that always yanked him right out of his comfort zone. Shrugging, he said, "Uh, all through the house the doorways that eventually lead here to the living room here have little yellow dots above them. Doors that don't have red dots instead."

"You are quite an observer," the guide said, pointing to the yellow dot above the doorway that led to the reception area—unnecessary here, since everyone could see the reception desk through the doorless archway. "Follow the yellow dot road and you can always find me in the reception hall. Remember that, and remember my name is Felicia."

The group broke up. Some of them wanted to go upstairs to the rooms overlooking the gardens; others wanted to take photos of one of the fake toilets (the normal wooden door had been replaced with clear glass); others wanted to look at the antiques, and so on. "What should we do?" Dipper asked Eloise.

Her hand in his felt cool. She took a deep breath. "Hmm. You know what? I'd really like to find that stair that just goes up to a ceiling and stops there. That is so weird!"

Dipper shrugged. "Well, yeah, but my theory is that it once led up to the fifth floor, which has been taken down. They just didn't remove the last part of the stairway, though it no longer had a place to go. I think I can find it." He checked his compass—of course he had a compass—and led the way.

They got baffled once, when a hallway turned left instead of the expected right, but then Dipper found where he had gone wrong and they finally spotted a stair ahead of them. It went up to the second floor, where another identical stairway—except it zigged where the lower one zagged—led up to the third floor, and then they had to walk two rooms away from the light shaft and into a gloomy, dim chamber to find the one that led up to the fourth floor, and then they had to go roughly back over the lower two flights to find the blind stair leading up to the ceiling.

It ascended into utter darkness, and Dipper took his flashlight from his backpack and turned it on. The stairway looked as if it had never been finished: Rough, dark, splintery wood with a time-warped handrail on either side, it slanted up like a fairly steep ramp, its treads conventionally wide but only about a third the height of normal ones.

"They're all low," Dipper said, flashing the circle of light over them, "because Mrs. Westminster had arthritis. She wanted to walk anywhere in the house that she cared to visit. I guess that meant everywhere but the basement, because those steps looked normal. Anyway, even when she got real old, she could still hobble up and down the stairways."

"I want to go up," Eloise said.

Dipper flashed the light all around. "Well, there's no _keep off_ sign. But the light's bad. Let's be careful."

They started up side by side, the stair treads creaking and popping under their feet. "Hold my hand again, please," Eloise said. He put out his left hand to grasp her right.

He advised, "Hang onto the rail, too. Watch out, though. It's full of splinters." He had a sudden mental flash of Mabel on their first day in the attic of the Mystery Shack: "Check out all my splinters!" Somehow he didn't think Eloise would react in just the same way.

Climbing with slow caution, Dipper felt his eyes beginning to sting, and he fought back an urge to sneeze. The stale smell of dust and mildew filled his nose. They were about twenty steps from the abrupt end of the stairway—it reached a wall and ceiling and simply stopped—when they began having to duck to keep from bumping their heads. "We can't make it to the very top," Dipper said. "For the last four feet of stair there's only a foot of clearance or less."

Up here the flashlight showed that the ceiling was not in terrific shape—something you couldn't really tell from floor level. Fine cracks zigzagged through the plaster, and festoons of ancient dusty-gray cobwebs looped down here and there. They stirred lazily as Dipper and Eloise breathed, like ugly underwater plants swaying in a slow current.

Eloise stooped and crept up a few more steps, then sat down, the ceiling only an inch from her head. "It looks a lot further down to the floor than it seemed when we were coming up."

"Yeah," Dipper said, uneasiness creeping into his voice. He settled on the step next to her, but he was actually a little taller than she was and had to keep his chin down so his trapper's hat wouldn't brush the ceiling. "Maybe we should go back down. My spook sense is tingling."

She nudged him. "There's no such thing! Don't try to scare me. That's so typical of boys! We haven't seen any ghosts."

"Lots of times they don't want to be seen," Dipper said. "After you encounter a few, though, you do get to recognize the vibe. There's a kind of—well, strange change in the air. Like when you saw your ghost, didn't you get kind of a cold shivery feeling?"

"The first time," Eloise admitted. "But then I got curious and didn't notice anything the other two times."

"I always feel it when I'm around spooks," Dipper muttered. "This one time my friends and I found two ghosts in an abandoned convenience store. Going in, nobody among us thought ghosts were real then, except I had my doubts. The others were all having fun, but I was having, I guess, premonitions. A lot of little things should've tipped me off. I had the strongest feeling something was there, and I was right."

Sounding interested, Eloise asked, "What kind of things tipped you off?"

"Little stuff," Dipper said. "Really just the atmosphere of the place. Cold, like I said. Expectant. Like being watched by someone you can't see. Like—like being around someone holding their breath but still making real quiet sounds that you're not sure you hear. My friends and me all turning into skeletons. Just minor things that ordinary people wouldn't even notice."

Eloise leaned her shoulder against his and asked in a dreamy voice, "Do you really think there are any ghosts here right now?"

"One way to find out."

Setting his flashlight on the step so its beam shone straight up and gave the stairway some dim illumination, Dipper took off his backpack and pulled out the compact anomaly detector he'd received as a gift from his great-uncle Stanford. Eloise sounded interested: "What does that do?"

"It finds ghosts," Dipper said. "Well, it does that among other things. If anything supernatural is going on, I should get a reading of fifty or higher on the meter." He clicked a slider switch. "OK, it's on . . . now I adjust this dial for ghosts, apparitions, and phantasms. Annnnd click." He pressed a button.

A red light on the device flashed, and the screen lit up in a vivid yellow. "Oh, wow," Dipper whispered.

Eloise leaned harder against him as she tried to see the small screen. "What?"

"It's registering three hundred! And that's the maximum! There's at least one powerful ghost nearby!"

"I knew it," Eloise said, her tone almost calm.

"Wait, wait, I'll change to location mode. That'll give me a reading on where the ghost is at the moment."

The device began to click and hum. Dipper pointed the sensor toward the base of the stair, and the hum softened from a shrill _zeeeeeee_! to a lower, softer _zzzzz_.

"It's not in the room down there," Dipper said. "We can make a break for it."

"No, I don't think we can," Eloise said.

She reached for the device and turned it in Dipper's hands so it pointed directly at her.

And the alarm screeched _ZEEP! ZEEP! ZEEP!_


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: Lost in the Passed**

* * *

No time to react.

Because the steps around Dipper and Eloise vanished, and they fell into darkness. He landed on something soft, a sofa, a bed, something like that, and bounce-rolled off, landing face-down on the floor. Eloise landed on top of him—if she was a ghost, she was solid!—and then tumbled off him. Dipper rolled over. His flashlight must have broken. He'd heard it hit, but the beam had gone out. Far above, a dim square of light vanished as the steps remade themselves. And then—

The darkness of the deepest midnight. Somehow Dipper had held onto his anomaly detector, and its lights flashed—not enough to illuminate anything, but it was working. He pressed the "go" button, and the screen flared an urgent white, the meter pegged out at the top.

Not just one ghost here.

Hundreds!

Maybe thousands.

His heart began to race, thudding inside his chest, and he felt the presence of the unknown. His bones had been chilled to zero, and shivers started along his spine and in his chest. Clenching his teeth, Dipper told himself, _No! Show no fear. Fight it down. You've dealt with ghosts before._

But not in the choking, breath-stealing, musty dark. The anomaly detector gave him just enough light to make out Eloise, sprawled face-down on a wood floor thick with a layer of gray fluffy dust. He knelt beside her and reached out—hesitated, fearful that his hand would plunge right through her form, or worse—and then grasped what felt like a very real shoulder. He shook her, all the while feeling that unseen entities were sweeping past him, trailing filmy garments, touching his face and neck with ice-cold fingers.

"Eloise?" His voice came out a squeak. The girl did not respond. "Eloise, are you OK?" He felt her cheek. It was warm, and he also felt her breath on his fingers. "Come on, please wake up," Dipper said.

In return he got only a faint groan from her. Now he heard—or maybe just imagined—a wailing, low moan, and he seemed to smell a foul, earthy scent of decayed flesh and mold. Again cold fingers brushed his face, almost a mockery of a caress.

Dipper closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep breaths. _Show no fear. Show no fear._

 _But I AM afraid!_

 _Remember, ghosts always need something. Find that out. Don't be afraid—that gives them power over you. Show no fear._

No way to do that but to—just do it. He stood up. He turned off the meter so the darkness fell heavy. More deep breaths. _I got this. I got it. I'm on top of it now._ "Ghosts? I know you're here! Show yourselves!"

Over maybe five or ten seconds, a wavery, wispy form appeared, glowing with its own dim inner light. Dipper squinted in the murk, but the apparition had no clear features, not even arms or legs. Just a barely glowing, grayish, floating vapor roughly human-sized and human-shaped. His size, to be precise. It did not look like a big figure. It hovered over the spot where Eloise lay. "Eloise? Is that you?"

The voice came soft as the whisper of rain on a calm spring night: "My name is Neosha." _Did I really hear that? Was it in my head?_

"Neosha. My name is Dipper Pines. You possessed Eloise, didn't you? This girl here?" Dipper asked.

"I guided her. I would have led her apart if I could, but she kept holding your hand."

"You didn't—you know, overpower her?"

"I cannot do that. I do not know how. I suggested, and she understood my thoughts because she is sensitive. She did not see me or know I was there, but I led her and urged her to the stair. It was necessary. For the sacrifice."

"That was wrong—wait, what?"

The floating figure drifted around him, and he turned to keep facing it. "I am sorry. It must be done. For one of us to find rest we must bring another to dwell in the cursed house. It is what must be done."

Dipper said, "Whoa, wait. You're going to _kill_ her?"

The figure halted in its drift. "Or you. Not both. Just one every seven years."

Dipper swallowed, but the cold lump of dread in his throat would not go down. "Is she dying?"

Now the ghostly whisper held a tinge of apology or regret: "I am keeping her asleep. Better that way. Now that we are all here, she would know us and be afraid. You have less fear. She might lose her mind."

"Neosha—there are others here, aren't there?"

"Many."

Once more Dipper's heart wanted to pound as, from all around, from every part of the darkness, came a resentful, many-voiced whisper: "Many!"

"One of you must die," Neosha said. "Choose. We will allow that. You choose."

"Why me?"

"Because the one you call Eloise has the Sight." Somehow Dipper heard the capital letter in that word. "Now that so many of us are near, she would see all us as you cannot. Then fear would shatter her mind. You must choose. We will abide by your choice."

"Hold on, hold on," Dipper said. "I've seen ghosts, too—more than she has, even. I've seen dozens of them! Heck, I've _been_ a ghost!"

He felt their awe. The room began to murmur as though innumerable bees buzzed in it. A male voice asked, "You have _been_ a ghost? You walked the path of the dead and found your way back to the land of the living? You say what cannot be!"

"Who are you?"

"My name was Wicaka, the Truth-Teller, when I was a Lakota warrior. A bluecoat soldier shot me in the year you call 1890. I had no weapon and stood before him bare-handed and yet he shot me. I died in the snow."

Dipper swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"I am only one of many."

"Many!" the wailing whisper went up again.

"I feel you, man," Dipper said. "Listen: Once a demon named Bill Cipher pulled me out of my own body. For a time there I was a ghost, and he possessed my body."

"A demon?" one of them asked.

"Well—I guess. He was, like, a yellow triangle shape, with one eye and little thin arms and legs—"

"Táaʼgo deezʼá ch'iidii!" someone moaned. "The yellow devil! My people know him. A liar, a demon!"

"The boy is cursed!" someone said. "Take the girl instead!"

"Wait, wait," Dipper said. "We beat the demon. We defeated him. I'm not cursed. My sister cast Bill Cipher out and I took my body back again. But I remember how awful it was when none of the living could see or hear me! I'd never felt such loneliness."

All around him rose whispery sounds of lamentation and sorrow. He asked, "What about Neosha? Where are you? Who were you?"

The indistinct gray apparition spoke again: "I was a child of the northern forests. The year that I had seen thirteen summers, white men came to our settlement. I saw my father and mother shot down, and I fled to a cave where our people buried our dead. The men could not find me, but they blocked the cave with great heavy stones I could not move. There among the bones and corpses I died in the dark of starvation and slow suffocation."

"Are you all Native American?" Dipper asked.

"No." This sounded like a woman. "My name was . . . Martha, yes. Yes, I remember. I lived in San Francisco. When the great earthquake came, I was pinned under rubble. There was fire everywhere. My own son tried to move the beams that held me down but couldn't. When I began to burn, I begged him to shoot me."

"Oh, man." Dipper swallowed hard and then asked, "But Neosha starved. Did the rest of you all die because of Westminster rifles?"

The chorus sighed "Yes. Neosha, too. Not all were shot, but the weapons led to our deaths."

"But—the man whose spirit ordered this house built—he built it to atone, you know. To say to the spirits that he was sorry."

"No," Neosha said. "He made it to trap us."

"Trapped. . . ." The sound had no echo, and came faint to his ears, wind in a chimney on a bleak night.

"Why would he want to do that?"

"No one knows," Neosha said. "No one knows."

"Is—is he here?"

Deep silence and nothing more.

"Look," Dipper said, "Think about this, please. I'm just fourteen years old. Eloise is the same age. It's not our time to go yet. I understand you want to escape, but only one of you can go, right? And if one of us dies, then our ghost has to remain here?"

"We regret this," a man's hoarse voice said. "I believed in never harming anyone. In life I preached the gospel, tried to teach ways of peace. But I traveled in a stagecoach assaulted by robbers. They shot us all, driver, guard, and four passengers."

"And you're all here?"

"No. Not all. Me alone. I woke up here. None of the ones who were shot with me did."

"This makes no sense," Dipper said. "You woke up? I mean, what happened? Did you die and then just find yourself here?"

"Yes," Neosha said. "I fell asleep in the cave, in the terrible dark, and then I was here."

"But thousands of people died because of the rifles," Dipper said. "Are—are they all here?"

"No . . . ."

"Can—would you appear to me?" Dipper asked. "I'm not afraid of you, but it's hard to talk when I can't see you. Please. I'll help you if I can."

Neosha's faint light faded. For the longest seconds, the room grew still—and perfectly dark. Eloise even murmured something he couldn't understand.

And then—

First one, then another, like an old-fashioned photograph slowly developing in its chemical bath, they began to emerge.

A tall man in buckskins, clearly Wicaka, with an awful round hole in his forehead. The elderly, kindly-faced Martha, in gingham and a bonnet, the lower part of her legs charred black. The minister, a thin man in a dark suit whose homely features reminded Dipper of a young Fiddleford McGucket, the front of his white shirt punctured by three bloody bullet holes in a line. More of them, men and women, white and black, Native American, Asian, materialized from nothing. They hovered mournfully around him.

Neosha last of all. The blurry form became a young girl in rags. Her mournful expression broke Dipper's heart. Hunger had gaunted her, her hair fell wild as if she'd clawed at it in terror, and he saw that her fingers were bloody, the nails worn to stubs. "You tried to dig yourself out," he said.

"Despair drove me."

"Tell me how this works," Dipper said. "When you have a—a sacrifice, how does it happen?"

"I'll tell you that," said a middle aged man, drifting from the crowd. His arms looked wizened, and he had no fingers—just charcoal-colored stumps. "My name's Baxter Willfred. Or it was. What year is this, son?"

"Uh, 2014."

"Yes. That would be right, because I was the last one. I passed over in 2007. I was an electrician hired to renovate the wiring here. It didn't have any originally, but Mrs. Wesminster had some of the rooms electrified right before World War I. Wiring's in terrible shape, or was then. I don't really know what happened. I was in the basement replacing one of the original fuse boxes with circuit breakers. The juice shouldn't have been on. But the electricity grabbed me and stopped my heart and they found me dead in the cellar two days later."

"And—the ghosts did that?"

"A sacrifice," the others sighed. "Once every seven years, a sacrifice."

"And then—one of them got to—go on?"

"The weeping lady," Neosha said. "She had been a prisoner here since 1875. She was among the first to come here. Over the years the others who had arrived at her time or a little earlier were all freed as we made our sacrifices."

"How did she leave?"

The story seemed eerily familiar. A circle of golden light, they said, had formed the instant that the ghost of Mr. Willfred had appeared, and the weeping lady had gone through it to—whatever waited beyond.

"Listen, help me understand. Do any of you have strong regrets?" Dipper asked. "Uh, things you left undone on earth? Do you want revenge against the Westminster family or anything like that?"

"Everyone has sorrows," one said.

"We are beyond revenge," another said.

"None of us would return to earth. We want only rest."

"Ressssst. . . ."

"OK. You're all victims here, first off. I don't know how, but something in this house is trapping you. If I can find that and maybe destroy it, it might free you, right? Like once some ghosts asked me to find a man who had made a machine that trapped ghosts and kept them from going on. He didn't mean to or even know it did that, but it did, and when I got him to turn off the machine, they were all set free. Trust me to try to do that here? Please? I give you my word I'll try my best."

"Sacrifice," they moaned.

Neosha drifted close enough for him to touch just by reaching out—though Dipper knew he couldn't touch her. "I am next to leave," she said, her eyes enormous and tragic. "I still feel. I feel sorrow that a young person must die so I can leave this place. I would release you. But if I did, the next in line would want a sacrifice."

Again the ghostly chorus: "Sacrifice."

Neosha reached out as though to caress Dipper's face, but he felt only a cold breeze. "One of you would not be allowed to leave alive. You or the girl. It must be."

"Could—could I at least have some time? Give me a chance, please. I know I can help you. Or I'll try real hard, anyway. Let Eloise go, OK? I promise I won't leave this house. Let me have two hours. That's not much. I mean, some of you have been here over a hundred years. Let me try, and if I can't set you all free, I—I'll come back here and—and you can—you know."

"We cannot trust anyone who walks the paths of earth," Wicaka said.

Martha sounded more accepting: "If the girl remains with us, let him go and look. We can always sacrifice her."

"That's wrong," the minister said. "Thou shalt not kill."

"We got no other way out," a man who looked like a cowboy—not a very impressive one, but one in old tattered clothes and a mangy-looking hat—said. Dipper winced. He must have been shot in the back. Exit wounds can be hideous. "Man does what he gotta, Preach. But still I say let the kid try. I like his gumption."

"He says he has succeeded before," someone else said.

The murmur started soft, but built like a rising tide, the waves of quiet sound swelling: "Let it be so. Let it be so."

And then—

Dipper found himself sitting on the solid stair again. For a second he thought, _Man, what a crazy dream!_

Then he realized he sat there alone. No Eloise. And no flashlight in his backpack, though he still held onto his anomaly detector.

 _I could run! I could get out of this house and call Mom and Dad and go back home and forget about this mansion and its ghosts. I don't have to die here! I could escape!_

 _Only—Eloise._

 _The poor people down in that hidden room._

 _Neosha._

Dipper stood up and carefully descended the steps. When he reached a room that had a window and light, he dusted himself off.

He switched the detector back on. "OK. Time to see what this puppy can do."

He set the target for the machine to look for. This time he didn't set it to "Ghosts."

He turned the dial to "Psychic Traps."

And the meter began to hum.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: A Matter of Death and Life**

* * *

"Come on, come _on!"_ Dipper whacked the meter—not too hard—and grimaced. The indicator had detected some form of psychic trap, all right, but the signal flickered, dim and uncertain. And the direction finder led him straight to the Minister's Parlor, then the room that adjoined the reception area.

He paused in the doorway and held the anomaly detector so that anyone glancing at him would think he held only a camera or a tablet. No use provoking hard-to-answer questions.

Other tourists strolled by, on their way out, chatting about the experience. Three of them, a middle-aged couple and a young woman who looked to be in her twenties—their daughter, maybe—sauntered past. The guy wore a gaudy blue, green, and white Hawaiian shirt splashed with a hibiscus-blossom print. He had a thick voice that sounded as though it should belong to a man twice as fat as he was: "Aw, it's fun, but you know. It's all hokey. None of this ghost stuff is real."

His wife, blonde-going-gray, trim in a lightweight yellow sweater and black slacks, patted his arm. "I know, hon. The antiques are real interesting, but ghosts? I wasn't scared for a minute."

The young woman, who looked more like the older woman than like the older man—and who was dressed similarly, pink sweater and black slacks—said, "I read online that the place really wasn't designed crazy, it was just rebuilt that way after that 1903 earthquake."

"Huh—1906," Dipper muttered in a sour undertone, but none of them heard him. The display showed clear, steady, and green. Something seemed to be close by—but the finder didn't seem to be able to focus on it. Could the trap be concealed by a cloaking device? Stanford had never mentioned anything like that.

Dipper paced around the room but couldn't localize the reading. Then he paused, unwilling to go into the reception hall—he wore a green wristband, after all, and they might just kick him out. Retreating to the Minister's Parlor (so called because Mrs. Westminster used it only on occasions when the minister of her church called on her and where she served him one small cup of tea on each visit), he fiddled with the controls.

Nothing he did stabilized the finder. Beginning to sweat, Dipper racked his brain for some way to fix the detector. Maybe what he had to deal with wasn't a psychic trap at all, but something that confused the sensors. He went around the band, passing "ghosts," and tried "Enchanted Objects" instead.

And . . . got a strong reading. That pointed toward—no, _behind_ him—no, behind him again—no—

 _At him_.

"Oh, come on!" he whispered again, shaking the anomaly detector. "Is this thing busted?"

Well—it _had_ signaled the presence of ghosts, and it had certainly been right about that. Dipper squirmed. He calculated that he had only an hour and fifteen minutes to go before the ghosts would somehow sacrifice Eloise.

Or him.

His breath seemed to catch in his throat. _What if I'm not—me? What if the ghosts have cast some kind of illusion spell and I'm lying unconscious up in that room and one of them is walking around channeling my senses? Is that even possible?_

He tried the pinch test, and it hurt. He at least wasn't dreaming. He turned the detector away from himself and looked at it, thinking hard.

"I can do this!" he told himself. He'd given himself private pep times before, especially on the track when he was in trouble, and they'd got him over a hump. Think, think, think! Could the trap be _outside_ the house, maybe in the garden or the yard? The indicator pulled that way. He had to check it out.

So he went to the reception area. At the moment no one manned the table there. He took out the meter again—and had to turn away as more tourists trooped past. He switched back to "Psychic Traps" and looked at the display.

Nothing. Not a single flicker. Not here, not back in the house. He switched it off and paced. _What am I missing, what am I missing? Something's been hidden very carefully. That means somebody doesn't want it found. That means if it's found—the trap can be opened and the trapped ghosts can be set free. Does someone, something KNOW I'm looking for the trap? Could one of the ghosts be sabotaging me? Does one of them WANT to kill me?_

A door behind the desk opened and the tour guide, Felicia, emerged, a bundle of brochures in her hands. "Hi, smart guy," she said with a big smile. "Enjoy exploring the house?"

"It's great," Dipper said. "Uh—listen, if I go outside to the front lawn, can I get back in again? I mean before the green wristband time is up."

"Oh, sure." She tilted her head and gave him a quizzical smile. "What are you up to?"

"Well," Dipper said, wishing he had just half of Mabel's superpower of improvising fibs under pressure, "there's a room up on the second floor that I thought looked out over the front lawn, but when I checked out the view from the window, I didn't recognize anything. I just want to see if I can spot the window so I can tell exactly where the room is."

"Go right ahead," she said. "Don't be surprised if you fail to find the window, though. Nobody can keep a sense of direction in this place." She lowered her voice to a whisper: "Even compasses lose their bearings. And you do want to be careful when you go exploring. This house has secrets that you couldn't even imagine in the worst dreams you ever have."

Dipper forced a smile. "Oh, I'm being real careful. Thanks."

He stepped outside into the warm sunshine of a California March. The walk leading to the house from the street stretched across the lawn for fifty yards or so, and it ran into a series of circles, like figure 8's in a row, three of them. Twenty-four identical circles, maybe twenty feet in diameter, like beads on a string. The center of each circle held an elevated brick flowerbed, the bases three feet tall, the bricks time-blackened and visibly repaired. Earthquake damage, maybe?

Each flower bed held a showy display: anemones, irises, narcissus, and tulips, among the ones he recognized, in a range of colors from deep blues to bright yellows and reds that would have pleased Mabel.

Those were the only flower beds—the rest of the lawn was a wide stretch of Buffalo grass, greening for the warm season. More than a dozen tall Canary Island palm trees scattered across the lawn, offering the house a meager screen from the street and small islands of shade. The fronds rattled and clattered softly in the breeze.

On either side of the concrete walk, just before the steps up to the front porch, stood two greenish-white marble statues, looking ancient, as if they'd been imported from Greece or Rome. Turquoise veins cut through the stone like cracks in an eggshell, and though the figures obviously been cleaned regularly, in places the deep tarnish of time had stained the stone gray and brown.

The figures represented two caped women, hoods draped over their heads, who towered there on their pedestals, each one larger than life size. The statues were similar to each other but not identical: Both stood in sorrowful attitudes of mourning, with their hands pressed together as though in prayer. Their heads were bowed, and though overall the poses looked respectful and peaceful, the smooth-faced women seemed vaguely threatening, disturbing. Centuries of wind, rain, and sun had eroded their faces blind.

 _We know a secret,_ their unreadable faces seemed to say. _We bet you're just . . . dying to find it out._

Frankly, they gave Dipper the jitters. Then, on a sudden brilliant hunch, he tested the statues.

Nothing.

So he retreated to stand at the base of the flower bed closest to the house and aiming at the house in general, he did a widespread scan for the trap. He got a signal.

But the faint display insisted the trap was some distance inside the house, not in the yard.

"Oh, man!" Dipper tilted the device to point upward. The signal faded—wherever the trap was, it was not on the second floor or any of the other two higher ones. He went back into the house. Felicia was no longer at the desk, but she had arranged the brochures in neat stacks. Dipper checked the whole room. No signal there, but a faint one somewhere further inside the house.

Hmm . . . the basement? Did it reach this far forward? If so, maybe, just maybe the trap could have been planted there, below the main way in and out of the house, a border-crossing stop for ghosts that allowed no one to leave.

But then—Mrs. Westminster couldn't go into the basement because of its steep set of stairs, and the house hadn't even been started until years after her husband Eben's death. He'd never heard of a ghost that followed its spouse from one coast of the country to the other—ghosts tended to be tethered to specific locations.

And then again—the ghosts in the hidden room came from all over the place, so maybe it wasn't that crazy. Why, though? Ford had written that almost always a ghost remained on earth because the person had unfinished business or a thirst for revenge. Or, like the Duskerton couple and the lumberjack ghost in Gravity Falls, they had a love for a special place that meant their spirits just couldn't bear to leave it.

How could Eben have loved a house not yet even built? So the trap builder would have to be his wife Minerva, right? But she couldn't have done it because she couldn't have reached the basement—if that was where it was—and she was supposed to be deathly afraid of ghosts, so much so that she had the house built like a—a labyrinth to confuse them and keep them away. Why would she attract and hold them?

It made no sense. But if not Mrs. Westminster, then who would have put a ghost trap there in the basement?

Still—worth a shot. He tried to remember how to get to the windowless room where the only door to the basement was.

It took him ten minutes of wrong turns, dark lonely rooms, creaky floors underfoot, and dead ends, but at last he found it, opened the basement door, and with the lonely churchyard smell of old wood and earth coming out on a cool breeze, he pointed the meter downward and tested.

Nothing. Not a peep. He turned the dial for targets. Not even a ghost down there. But the "Enchanted Object" setting still beeped, as if the machine thought he was enchanted. He took off his backpack, set it on the floor, and checked that.

The detector chattered like a pair of those novelty wind-up fake false teeth. "Strong reading, man," Dipper muttered.

He was wearing an enchanted backpack. Apparently. He turned the detector toward himself and got a signal. _Annnnd I'm enchanted too._ Something was screwy somewhere. Maybe he could ask Stanford to calibrate the device for him—if he lived to see Grunkle Ford again. There was no reason why the machine would think he was enchanted—

No. Wait a minute—Bill Cipher's molecules, still in his body! That would account for the false reading. Maybe. But no, he certainly didn't have Bill in his backpack. He reviewed the contents mentally, and came up with zilch. Unless someone had put a stealthy spell on his compass, his magnifying glass, his spyglass, his snacks (Mom had packed them), his spare underwear and socks—no, nothing could be magical. The machine had a flaw in it.

Dipper shouldered his backpack again and switched the detection back to traps. He turned in place, a slow circle, north, west, south, and then got the same faint signal again. That way. He took out his compass. East.

He clenched the compass hard. It was crazy. The house _faced_ east! He'd just come from the front yard, which lay exactly in that direction.

Time was passing, and he had no way to slow it. He hurried back, the detector in his hands, no longer caring whether tourists spotted him and got nosy. He heard Felicia's voice and saw her in the last doorway before the reception hall, speaking to an elderly couple about the house.

The detector was showing the strongest signal yet. The tourists thanked her, tipped her, and went on, and Felicia turned to wave at them. Dipper took five steps forward.

Without turning around, with her back to him, Felicia said, "So you really are a smart young man. Now you've found me. What do you think will happen next, young man?"

She had not changed physically, but was still a slim, pretty twenty-something in a black dress.

But her voice—her voice rasped like fingernails on a blackboard, like the death-rattle of an angry old man, like the soundtrack of nightmares.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: A Game of Hide-and-Go-Die**

* * *

Dipper tensed, but the figure before him—Felicia, whatever it was—spun and slammed into him, seizing his arms, lifting him, flying through the corridors with him too startled to yell or struggle—

They flashed through a solid wall, then upward, out into the sunlight, then in shadow again—

And it set him down. It no longer looked like a young woman, but a mummy—dry, crisp, corrugated, its eyes deep-sunken glittering pits, its face parchment stretched over bone. Dipper backed away and realized that above him a great bell hung silent, the rope from it frayed to nothing.

"The bell tower," he gasped.

"My home." The voice had become a horrible arid rasp, syllables drawn out and harsh as sandpaper.

"Wh-who are you?" Dipper asked. The figure wore shriveled garments, green with mold and stiff with age, but whether it was a man or woman—he couldn't even tell.

"I used to be Eben Westminster," the grating voice said. "Now—I am—I am—I am this!" The figure shifted weirdly, like a form glimpsed through a pane of glass with water flowing over it. The tour guide, Felicia, stood smiling at him. "You should have figured it out—smart boy," she said with a sneer, though the voice was sweet.

Again the features flowed like melting wax, and the body became shorter, dumpier, a wrinkly-faced old woman in heavy spectacles and a purple dress. "For a great many years," it said in a prim voice, "I was Minerva Westminster, until people began to wonder if I would live forever and I had to take other shapes."

Dizzyingly, the body and faced melted and reshaped themselves, more than once: a tall man with a pencil mustache, a little girl of ten or twelve, a fat man with a jolly red face—and then the wizened, shrunken mummy again.

"They said you were dead!" Dipper said.

"So I am, boy. So I am. But I learned powerful spells that let me cling to Earth and keep a shape—and change it as I wish." The creature shook its head. "You should have gone to the slaughter as I intended. I put the mark on you to force you to the place of sacrifice—but you dragged another along, and she will have to do. She will die just as fast as you would have."

"Eloise!" Dipper said. "No—you can't kill her! What did she ever do to you?"

"She entered my house," the creature said. "By the laws of dark magic, I must release a soul once every seven years. I must replace it—or my own soul will have to pass on and be judged for all my sins." The form bent, thrusting its rotted face close to Dipper's. "I can't allow that."

"Come on, man," Dipper said, trying to back away and finding the wall at his back. "Killing another victim—that's just making things worse for you! Why did you even pick on us?"

"I have no hatred for you," the mummy-man said, raising its doddering head. "I have no care for you. The living are as logs for my fire—the things that keep the warmth of movement and awareness within me! What does it matter if I burn a young one or an old? They serve the same purpose."

"Don't you even care?"

"For you? No. Not as long as I can stretch out my existence here. That is all. That is everything." The creature pointed a bony finger and cackled. "I will leave you. This tower no longer has an entrance. Perhaps you will somehow be able to climb down from here without breaking your neck, or you may fall and die. Or perhaps someone will find you as you scream for help. Or maybe you will starve here—it is of no consequence to me."

"Wait, wait!" Dipper said, desperation tightening his voice. "I—I promised Eloise that I wouldn't let her die! Let me at least go back to where she is so—so they can take me!"

"The Grand Ballroom!" the creature rustled. "What? Would you die in her place? Nothing is easier than to send you back—you have the mark on you!" It raised its skeletal hand, the fingers and thumb poised to snap, but it paused. "If you wish, I will send you there now. Do you? Well, do you?"

Dipper touched the gold star on his vest. His reward for being a smart guy. Well—he _was_ a smart guy. "Do it," he said.

As the creature that had been Eben Westminster started to snap its fingers, Dipper ripped the star from his vest—and stuck it onto Eben's chest as he seized the creature's arm, a broomstick inside a coat jacket—

A silent, blinding flash filled the world—now, it was behind his eyes, inside his head—he felt as if a hurricane were blasting him through space, but he wouldn't let go, though a howl of outrage and anger screamed all around him—

And then they tumbled to the floor. The creature writhed and flailed, and the ghosts crowded around from the darkness.

"This is the man who trapped you!" Dipper yelled, scrambling to his hands and knees. "Eben Westminster!"

Someone shrieked—Eloise, fully awake and frantically crawling away over the dust-covered floor—

"No!" Eben screamed.

"Justice!" the ghosts moaned in a chorus. "Justice!"

"Not with my sins on my head!" Eben dropped to his knees. "Mercy! I can't go to judgment!"

The unrelenting ghosts crowded in. Dipper reached Eloise and said, "Don't look!"

"It—it's beautiful!" Eloise exclaimed.

"What? What is?"

She pointed into the dimness. Dipper saw only they faint blue-gray whirl of the ghosts, nothing else. "I don't—what are you seeing?"

"A doorway!" Eloise said. "A golden doorway, beautiful light—look there, it's right there!"

Dipper saw nothing but darkness.

And then one of the ghosts—the old woman who had died in the earthquake—rose from near the floor and dwindled as she did, vanishing utterly. "She went through," Eloise said.

Now others rose, shrinking and disappearing, and the light from the ghosts grew dimmer. Dipper took out his phone and turned on the flashlight app.

And wished he had not. The mummy of Eben huddled all knees and elbows on the floor, skeletal hands clutching its skull of a head, shaking so hard the bones rattled.

"They're all leaving," Eloise whispered. "They're going through the golden light."

"I can't see it," Dipper whispered. "But it's a portal to the Beyond. It's their way out. Somehow his being here in the room opened it."

The writhing, groaning mummy piped in a voice like a broken flute: "Don't leave me! Don't leave me to die!"

A calm, quiet reply: "You are dead already."

Only one ghost remained—the young, gaunt girl, Neosha. She stood above Eben, looking more solid than she yet had.

The creature of bone and shriveled skin raised its head, its jaws chattering as if about to fall from its skull. "No! Not as long as one of you remains, I am not fully dead, not fully!"

The girl extended her hand. "I will go with you."

The mummy lurched, trying to pull away, but seemed to lack the strength. "I can't go! I'll face judgment!"

Neosha's quiet voice said, "You already have. Come. Have courage. I will go with you."

"Wait!" Dipper yelled. "What about us? We'll be trapped here!"

The girl turned enormous eyes, eyes brimming with grief, on them. "I cannot feel for the living. Only for the dead." To Eben, she said, "I forgive you for what your work did to me and my family. Forgive yourself. I do not say forget; I do not say expect mercy; I do not say have no regret. Grieve for the wrongs you have done, but come. It is the only way." She looked up, and suddenly she looked different—almost alive, not starved and bloody, but young and pretty. "My parents call to me. I must go to them. Come now. It is your only chance."

The mummy put out a trembling hand. The ghost took it and rose—and something slipped from the collection of bone and dried flesh, and the body collapsed into a heap, fingers rattling on the wood floor like dice thrown by a demon—

And Eloise fell back. "They're gone."

"All of them," Dipper agreed.

She grabbed his hand again. "We're going to die in here, aren't we?"

"Not if we can help it."

He stood up and looked around the room. It had almost no furniture—the sofa they had landed on, a few chairs along one wall. Ah, but that wall had windows.

Useless windows—they looked onto laths, not outside. The room had been boarded over, sealed, forgotten, many years ago. But Dipper tried a window sash, and it creaked and squeaked and inched up, sticking in the old frame so he had to tug and hammer at it. He opened it as wide as it would go, and then he broke one of the chairs and used a leg to batter the woodwork covering the window from the outside.

The carpentry might have been expert, but the wood was old and dry and he cracked a four-inch wide lath, then kicked it completely out, and he saw dim light on the other side. With that lath gone, it was easier to break more and more—until finally he'd opened a hole big enough for the two of them to get out. He helped Eloise through first, then handed her his backpack and hauled himself through.

They stood in a hallway. A far-off window gave them faint light. Eloise slapped clouds of dust from Dipper's vest, and he brushed her back as best he could. "Come on," he said.

They headed for the window.

And it vanished. The hall suddenly took a left turn that had not been there a second before and led to a dead end.

"This isn't fair! Eben's gone!" Dipper said.

"It's not him. It's the house," Eloise told him.

"The _house_?"

"It wants to kill us," she said. "Don't you feel it? Whatever was in that skeleton is in the house now!"

"Come on!"

It was like a maze in a terrifying dream, one where nothing was as it seemed—doors opened to blank walls, staircases ended midway down, forcing them to drop ten feet to the floor. Windows vanished as they neared them. An open door slammed as if it were trying to bite them in half.

"Think of something," Eloise pleaded.

And then something came into Dipper's head, words from his great-uncle Ford's Journals, a charm against evil forces. He shouted it as loudly as he could: " _Fructum a tenebris ad lucem!"_

The house—thrashed. The floor bucked beneath them, tumbling them to their knees. The hallway _writhed_.

But a door popped open, and Dipper grabbed Eloise's hand and dragged her through—

And there was the reception hall—

Plaster rained from the ceiling.

He hurtled through the front door, pulling Eloise after him. Someone grabbed him and straightened him up. "It's an earthquake!"

The last spasm rolled beneath his feet dust billowed from the open front doors, and a crowd of people who had spilled out of the house asked if they were all right. "The old place stood up," someone said. It was another tour guide, dressed as Felicia had been. "But I think we'll cancel the next tour. Our engineers will have to make sure it's safe. Everyone accounted for?"

A young man with a clipboard said, "Yes, everybody got out."

"How about Felicia?" Eloise asked.

The tour guide looked at her. "Felicia? Who's that?"

"Never mind," Dipper said. "I'm sure she got out." He pulled Eloise along. "Listen, that—thing in there—that was Felicia!"

"What?"

"I don't know how it works," Dipper admitted. "But trust me on this. Are you OK?"

"Yes. Dirty, though. So are you."

The house made a strange groaning, growling noise. "Come on, it's mad at us! Let's get off its lawn."

They stood on the sidewalk near the entrance, still slapping dust from their clothes while Dipper tried to explain. Eloise couldn't understand, but she said she trusted him. "What did you say that made it let us go?"

Dipper repeated the Latin words. "Over light, darkness has no power," he translated. "It's part of a ritual for purifying cursed places. My great-uncle taught it to me."

"Say it again."

He repeated it until she had memorized it. "I may have a use for that," she said. She looked down the sidewalk. A hurrying couple had to pause at a stoplight, but they waved. "Here come Mom and Dad," Eloise said. She asked, "What's your phone number?" He told, her, and she dialed it. "Answer when it rings."

Dipper did, and they had each other's numbers. All around, sirens wailed in the distance and car horns blared. "I'm going to try to free the ghost at home," she said over the noise. "I may call you."

"You—you're not afraid?"

"I think the ghosts underestimated me," she said with a lopsided smile. "Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! Yeah, I'm a mess, but there was an earthquake!"

They both hugged her, and she told them that Dipper had led her out before the house could collapse. They thanked him, the two kids said goodbye, and then Dipper saw his own mom and dad cruising down the street in their car. They paused for him to jump in, and both of them asked about the quake.

"It was rough for a few seconds," Dipper said. "But I don't think it did any bad damage." He paused. "Maybe some windows crashed and some old boards were broken and plaster fell."

"It was centered south of here," his dad said. "Good news is that for Piedmont it was only a 4.9. It was a 5 here."

"We called Mabel," his mother said. "She said everything's OK, and the house wasn't damaged."

A car behind them honked, and Dad drove forward. Dipper turned in the seat to look at the Wesminster Mystery House. Despite the sun, it looked as though it were under a cloud.

To Dipper, it no longer looked like a place of mysteries to be solved.

It brooded there beyond the palm trees, and now, like Eloise, he felt what radiated from it:

Evil.

Evil.

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines** : Tuesday, April 1, 2014: This morning at breakfast Mabel told me that Mom and Dad had given her permission to drop out of school and move to Gravity Falls so she could live permanently with Waddles and Widdles and become a professional pig whisperer.

Fortunately, I've lived through enough April Fools' Days with Mabel to know right off that she was putting me on, and I told her so. I didn't even try to fool her. Not in the mood.

Good track practice after school today, but man, I am missing Wendy so bad right now. Marking the days off on the calendar! As of tomorrow, 67 days until June 7, when I may see her—if we're in the state track finals and if she can come down for them. And on June 8, either she'll drive us or Mabel and I will take that long bus ride to Gravity Falls. Mom and Dad have made their plans for vacation and this morning they officially said yes, we can go back to the Falls!

So now I'm aching to see Wendy. I'll call her around nine tonight, I guess. It's seven-thirty now. We just had dinner, and Mabel's sitting on the floor in the corner of my room doing math homework, listening to Men-R'nt-Boys on her headphones—I can tell by the way she bops—and occasionally asking me to check her answers. I told her to get my calculator out of my backpack.

"Hey, what're these?" she asked as she rummaged, holding up a sheet of eleven stickers. Big gold stars.

"Picked them up—"

"Huh? Wait a sec!" She took off the headphones. What was that?"

"I said I got them at the Westminster Mystery House," I told her, trying to cut the explanation short. "If you want them, you can have them. They may be cursed, though."

Her eyes grew round with interest. "For real?"

"Yeah." I shrugged. "Probably not now, but maybe they were. I didn't do so hot in investigating some ghosts there. It worked out OK, I guess, but—I did and said some really dumb things and nearly caused a girl our age to die."

"I'll paste these in my scrapbook," she said. "When you want to talk about it, I'll add a descriptive label."

"OK."

She let a couple of minutes go by as she worked out an algebra problem, without the aid of "Now You Got Me Cryin', What, You Want Me Dyin'?" on the headphones. "Dipper?"

All I'm doing at the moment is lying on the bed with a pen and my second Journal. I glanced up. "Yeah, what?"

Casually, Mabel has just asked me, "Was this girl pretty?"

(Later): I set the Journal aside for the moment. "Her name was Eloise, and I'd call her cute. We held hands." I had to clap my own hands over my ears. "Don't squee! It was because the place was scary, not because we got mushy. My gosh, I only met her that one time! There's nothing between us, and I'll probably never hear from her again. She and her folks live in Minnesota, so there's no way we're, like, hooking up."

Mabel had been sitting cross-legged on the floor. She leaned back into the angle of the corner and gave me a stern stare, pretending to be the Alpha Twin again. "Good thing for you. Wendy would kill both of you."

I sat up, dangling my legs over the edge of the bed. Somehow I hadn't noticed, but I've grown enough so I can now put my feet on the floor when I do that. I said, "Funny, but I don't think Wendy'd do that. She'd understand it was a bad situation. Eloise and I got out of it the best way we could, but it was a close call."

My voice, I guess, showed Mabel that I still troubled about the whole thing. "Place was scary, huh? What's it like?"

I tried to grin, but it felt like I was making an angry face. Didn't mean to. "The Westminster Mystery House? Imagine the Mystery Shack about a hundred and fifty times the size it really is, and with class."

"Can't do it, Broman," she said, shaking her head and pursing her lips. "The size is no problem, but a Mystery Shack with class? Beyond the scope of the human imagination. Maybe we can go back there together some time."

I hopped off the bed and sank onto the floor and grabbed Mabel and hugged her. "No! Never. But I do wish you'd been there with me," I said into her shoulder, trying to hide that I was tearing up. "You could've kept me from making so many dumb mistakes."

"Hey," she said gently, patting my back. "It's OK, Dipman. Nobody died, right?"

I shook my head. "But—I don't know. I walked away from that house feeling that it knew I'd been there and it hated me. Go back? No, Sis, not me. Not ever if I can help it. You know, I think that when a place has been haunted—really haunted, and the haunting is a bad one—though the ghosts might leave, the house has absorbed their emotions. This was a real bad one."

She stroked the back of my head. "Talk to Ford about that. Hey. Call me tonight if you have nightmares."

"Always," I said, breaking the hug and swiping my hand across my eyes. "And next time I take on a haunting, we have to do it together or it's no deal. Mystery Twins?"

We did the silly little fist bump. "Sure," she said softly. "Mystery Twins."

I love my sister's smile when she's feeling kind, especially now that her braces are off. I can't blame Trey Moulter for having a thing for Mabel. Oh, I could cheerfully kick his butt over it, but I can't blame him.

I took Mabel's hand and squeezed it. "Thanks. I can't do anything without my sidekick."

"I'm flattered, Brobo," she said, beginning to work out another math problem with the help of the calculator. She left the headphones off. I could faintly hear the boy band wailing out their second-biggest hit, "Girl, You Done Made Me Stupid." Mabel heard it too and turned off the player app on her phone. "But let's be honest with each other. I think I've deserved that much. Will you always be on the level with me, Dip?"

"Always."

"Then I'll treat you the same way." Without even looking at me, she said in her most serious voice, "YOU are clearly the sidekick."

So, it being the tag end of April Fools' Day, I let her have that one. Because sometimes you need to be kind to your sister.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: Finals**

Late May, and the Mystery Twins got some good news: Because of their extra work, they had exempted some of their freshman finals. Math and English were mandatory, but Dipper didn't have to take his other finals, and except for history, Mabel had exempted her other classes, too—she even was the school Honor Student for art.

If Track and Field had been a more popular sport, Dipper probably would have been a school hero, too—but very few students even knew that he was on a team, and in the halls he was just Dipper Pines. At least he had cured them of calling him Dorkface early in the school year.

During the study days, Dipper and Mabel—who had English and algebra together—helped each other study. Dipper had no worries of acing the algebra test, but numbers and Mabel didn't always get along. When she had to solve for X, she tended to wander off into a narrative about pirate booty and the spot where the scallywags had buried it. However, with few other classes to worry about, she buckled down and studied hard. In return, Mabel pointed out ways that Dipper could make his English compositions more lively. He didn't really need the advice, because he was carrying an A average in English, but she helped him see ways of avoiding repetitions and putting in specific details that, he thought, really did help his writing more interesting to read.

When they took the final exams, Dipper got 100 on the math test, Mabel 93—still an A and still a good grade. In English, they tied at 95. As the last week of May ticked down and June began, they received identical official-looking envelopes that told them they had made the Principal's List, the highest tier of the Honor Roll.

Mabel danced around, brandishing her letter. "Hey, bro-o'-mine, I want your letter for my scrapbook! Mine and yours go on facing pages! High five?" Mabel asked with a wide grin and a raised hand.

"For real this time," Dipper said. They slapped five-fingered hands—hard, because Mabel was enthusiastic—and then did a pinky lock.

"Still feels weird," Mabel said, wiggling her pinky. Both of theirs had finally split off from their ring fingers the previous day, and they both agreed that the new skin on the side of the fingers felt strangely itchy.

Dipper wriggled his own fingers. "Give it time, Sis, give it time." He chuckled. "At least I can play all the guitar chords now!"

Mabel flopped down to sit on the foot of Dipper's bed. "So—how's the school going to do in the state track meet, brobro?"

Dipper gave her a squinting glance of suspicion. "Whaaat do you want to know that for? Are you planning on laying a bet?"

"Nah," she said in a passable imitation of Grunkle Stan. "I only like to make wagers with things I can roll, fan, or spin!"

Dipper had to laugh at that. "Yeah, well, we'll do OK. My average time isn't as high as two or three of the sprinters from other schools, but it's pretty good. I think I'll at least be in the running for third place."

"In the running! I see what you did there!" Mabel jumped up and began to dance around him, poking him with her forefinger. "Boop! Boop!"

"No. Tickling," Dipper said firmly, because he knew where that usually led. Then he sighed. "Wendy's not gonna be able to drive down," he said.

"Aw! What's wrong?"

He shrugged. "Engine trouble with her car. She's saving to get parts to fix it, but it won't be ready by the sixth. But she told me on the phone last night that she'll meet the bus."

"Man. I'm missing Waddles and Widdles so much it hurts. I wish we could at least fly up to Portland again."

"You vomited last time," Dipper reminded her.

"So? If you put your mind in the right place, puking's actually fun! Hey, Grunkle Stan said that he and Ford might take us out on the ocean on the Stan O' War II this summer!"

"That'll be cool," Dipper said. "Now get out of my room so I can change."

"Into what?"

"My running shorts!" Dipper said.

She laughed. "You gonna take off your underpants?"

"No."

"Then go ahead. I've seen you in less than that! I won't stare."

"All right, be a pest."

Dipper had laid out his socks, running shorts, tank top, and sweatband. He kicked off his shoes without untying them—that always drove his mom crazy—and then pulled off his red T-shirt.

"Oh, wow," Mabel said. "You're startin' to look like Grunkle Stan, Dip! Remember when you grew your first chest hair?"

"Sure," Dipper said, pulling the tank top over his head and tugging it down. "I can visit it any time I want in your first Gravity Falls scrapbook."

"I'd have to use like twenty pages now, and they'd all be full!"

Dipper turned his back and shucked off his cargo shorts. He reached behind him for his running trunks and pulled them on.

"I'm gonna tell Wendy to look at your butt," Mabel said.

"Don't you dare!"

Mabel giggled. "But you got a good butt now, Broseph! Must be all the running. I think she'll like it. Something solid to hold onto, you know?"

"Please." He got into his socks and running shoes. "Want to go over to the park with me?"

"OK. I'll time you."

They stopped at the fridge long enough to grab their water bottles, nicely chilled, and to tell their mother where they were heading. Then they walked to the park near their home—half a mile—which, though it had no track, did have a soccer field. Dipper had measured a hundred meters on it, and that's where he practiced his sprints.

At six in the afternoon, no one was using the field, and Mabel took up her station at Dipper's finish line as he did warm-ups and stretching exercises. "You're not much shorter than Wendy now," she said. "I still got a millimeter on you, though. Still, I gotta admit you buffed up nice."

"You should exercise, too," Dipper said as he did his stork stretches. "Makes you feel better."

"If I felt any better than I normally do, I couldn't stand myself," Mabel said with a smile. Then it faded, and in a small voice, she asked, "Dipper? Am I—dumpy?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Dumpy? No. I mean, you're not skinny, but skinny wouldn't look good on you. You're becoming a very pretty girl. That's why I worry about you and jerks like Trey Moulton."

" _Pffft_! Oh, let it go," Mabel said. "Trey's going out with like three girls now. I am so over him." She sighed. "Maybe this year's the charm. Maybe I'll have my big summer romance at last."

Dipper went into his lunges. "Promise me that you'll consult with Wendy when you zero in on a guy."

"Yeah, good idea, bro. She's broken up with about a dozen guys—what's wrong?"

"You know," he said darkly.

Mabel put a hand over her mouth. "Oops. Sorry! But come on, bro, she's not gonna break up with you! You worry too much. You'll see."

"Maybe. I just wish she could come and drive us up, like she wanted to."

"Hey, it's not her fault, Dip. And think of her. I mean, it's a long way for her to drive. If we have to take the bus, we're used to it."

"Yeah. It'll be weird, us off in Gravity Falls and our parents, like, six thousand miles away in Europe."

"Just for a month in June and July. And we weren't exactly in running distance before."

"I'm ready," Dipper said, standing up and shaking out his arms. Give me the signal when to start."

"OK.'

He walked to the end of the soccer field, did a few last-minute stretches, then got into his starting stance. "Any time!"

Mabel held out a red handkerchief—that had become their preferred signal—and set her phone to stopwatch mode. She yelled, "On your mark! Get set! Go!" She dropped the handkerchief and started the stopwatch.

Dipper ran all-out, arms pumping. Mabel clicked the STOP button as he passed her. He came back, not as out of breath as he'd always been when he'd started track. "How'd I do?"

"Ten point thirty-three seconds, brobro."

He shook his head. "That seems to be my limit. I keep hitting that but not doing any better."

"So who _is_ doing better?"

"The freshman guy at Crosstrees High clocked ten point twenty-one in his last meet. And the sophomore at Lattimer Consolidated was ten point twenty-eight."

Mabel sat on the grass. "I'm sure you have a plan," she said with an exaggerated sigh. "Unfold it and read it to me."

He sat next to her. "No written-out planny thingy. I've learned better. All I got is to train until Friday. Then—we'll see."

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Thursday night, June 5, 2014—I can't sleep, which is bad, because tomorrow we drive down to the track meet. I have to qualify in the prelims, and I just can't break 10.30 seconds. That ought to get me into the finals, but what if it doesn't? I'd feel like the whole year is wasted._

 _Which is dumb! I mean, I'm tied for the most first place wins with Coop in the 1600. If I were a sophomore, I'd already qualify for a letter jacket. But coming this close and then maybe not even getting into the running—I have to try harder!_

 _I wish—shoot, I've written that so many times. I wish Wendy were going to be there. Even if I came in dead last, I'd feel so much better. But her dumb car chose this time to break down. It's not her fault, but I really feel depressed tonight._

 _Ever since that nasty business with the Westminster ghosts I keep expecting Eloise to call, too, but she hasn't, and I'm not going to bother her. I remember once Wendy complaining that one of Robbie's faults was he was so needy. I don't want her to think I'm that way. Or Eloise to think it, either. But I do wish I knew what happened with the ghost she saw in their house back in Minnesota. I liked Eloise, and it would be so good to hear from her._

 _I really hope I'm not needy._

 _But I guess I sorta am. Needy and nerdy._

 _Oh, speaking of the Westminster House: I talked on the phone to great-uncle Ford for about an hour last Saturday evening. I finally thought I'd be able to hold it together and tell him about the house and the ghosts and all, but he could tell I was getting upset all over again just speaking about that old man Eben Westminster. He cut me off and said, "Calm down, now. I know what it was, Dipper."_

" _What? He looked like a mummy, but he said he was a ghost. Or dead, anyway."_

" _He was a lich."_

 _That surprised me. "You mean like in 'Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?' I thought that was just a game thing."_

" _No, they're very rare but real. A lich is an animated corpse, but not like a zombie, not mindless and obsessed. With a lich, the dead person has invested his or her soul in a physical object—and until the soul either is surrendered voluntarily or the object is destroyed, the lich will survive in a kind of undead state. They're usually powerful magicians, and it's not unusual for them to enchant the living to be their servants and followers. Their goal may be as ambitious as world domination or as simple as their Earthly survival. The lich fears death more than most people, you see. The magic they use to prolong their existence on this plane is—well, very dark."_

 _I told him about how the house itself had tried to capture Eloise and me, how people thought its upheavals were only an earthquake. "It turned out there really was an earthquake," I said, "but it was too mild for what we felt—the first reports of it being a five-plus were wrong, and it was only a 3.7."_

 _Ford said in a thoughtful voice,_ " _Then the house may have been the lich's phylactery—the place where he imbued his soul. You said you actually saw his ghost pass on?"_

" _So did Eloise. She has, I don't know, second sight or something. She can see ghosts in a way I can't. I saw his ghost vanish, you know, just rise in the air and fade out, but she saw it go through a golden portal."_

" _Yes, that sounds accurate. This is what I think happened: This man—Eben? Eben Westminster's soul went on to its reward—but it had dwelled in that house so long that the house gained a kind of evil sentience. Now it isn't him anymore, but something different, something inhuman. I may have to pay a visit to San Jose to investigate at first hand."_

" _Come in the first week of June," I urged him. "Because we'll be leaving for Gravity Falls June seventh."_

" _I will see what I can do."_

 _But I haven't heard back from him. I'm gonna put the Journal down now. I'll play my guitar for a while and try to get sleepy. I need to sleep. Without nightmares, for a change. I hope._

* * *

On Friday, Dipper's time of 10.29 in the prelims was third, after Thaddeus Greene, the Lattimer sophomore, ran a 10.28 and Hugh Hammermill, freshman from Crosstree, ran it in 10.26. At least he'd lost a fraction of his best time.

So on Saturday morning at nine o'clock, Dipper waited with his coach and the rest of the team for the meet to begin, feeling a little anxious and a little depressed.

"Never seen so many at a track meet," Chuck Macavoy, sitting on the bench next to him, muttered.

The stadium surged with an excited crowd, and Dipper began to feel the flutter of stage fright in his stomach. Somewhere not far behind him up in the bleachers, his mom, dad, and Mabel sat to cheer him on—but at the moment he needed more than that.

Franklin Clowse, for whom Dipper had run the 800 in his first meet, whistled from his place down the bench. "Oh, man! Check out the babe!" he said.

Dipper didn't look around. He was in no mood. A couple of the other runners murmured appreciatively, though, until Coach Dinson growled, "Knock it off."

And then—from behind him—a growling voice, asked, "How's it hangin'?"

Dipper jumped up. "Grunkle Stan!"

And as he turned—she was there, and she hugged him and hardly even bending her head, planted a kiss on him. "For luck, Big Dipper!" Wendy said, pushing him back and grinning at him. She was wearing his pine-tree cap, and a breeze stirred her beautiful long red hair. She held up her right hand. "High five!"

They slapped hands, and she said, "No way!" and grabbed his wrist. "Dip! Something new has been added!" She wriggled her own pinky, and Dipper touched the tip of his to hers. She locked pinkies with him. "Nice! You're really growin' up good! No go do your run and don't let me down, man!"

The coach said, "Very nice, young lady, but my boy _does_ have to run in a minute, so how about taking your seats?"

"Yeah, sure," Stan said. "Hey, Dip—run good, 'cause I got a hundred bucks ridin' on you!" Before Dinson could protest, Stan clapped him on the shoulder. "Just kiddin'! But Dipper, I will be yellin' for ya!"

Dipper sat down, feeling pleasantly dazed.

Clowse leaned over. "Whoa, baby! You never told us about _her_ , man! Lucky dog!"

"She's _gorgeous_! Way to go, _Dipper_!" Macavoy told him. He swiveled his head to look at Wendy as she climbed back up the bleacher stairs and sighed.

On the PA, the announcer was calling the runners for the 100-meter.

"Do your best, Dipper," Coach Dinson said, slapping his shoulder. "We're pulling for you."

That was nice and all, but at the moment it really didn't matter. The race didn't matter. Oh, he would try his best, all right, but win or lose, the race was no longer important. Not now that Wendy was here.

Smiling, Dipper hustled to the ready area where the others were stretching out. He felt ready to run.

 _End of Pages from a Scrapbook_

… _but stay tuned for Summer 3 in Gravity Falls_


End file.
